


Porgs

by TehanuFromEarthsea



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars The Force Awakens, star wars the last jedi
Genre: F/M, porgs, reylo porgs, salty porgs play cupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2018-12-22 15:18:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 38,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11970102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehanuFromEarthsea/pseuds/TehanuFromEarthsea
Summary: Porgs think of Luke Skywalker as the eccentric but harmless giant who lives on their island. Life on Ahch-To can be pretty dull, so at least Luke gives the Porgs something to watch.Then another of his kind arrives, with her friends, and life on Ahch-To gets a lot more entertaining for the porgs.Then comes the invader...*    *    *





	1. Chapter 1

“Another giant,” said Sunny, craning his neck a little to watch the newcomer climb Ahch-To’s long stairway.

“Probably here to see Uke,” said Stillwater. “The plumage is similar, anyway.”

Sunny had to agree. The new arrival’s pale grey and beige coverings resembled Luke’s, though skimpier. “I’ve always wondered if Uke dresses like that to fit in with us, or whether he wants to look like a rock too?” he asked.

“Both could be true,” said Stillwater. “This new one is way too scrawny for a porg though.” She fluffed her feathers and settled herself more comfortably between two stones. With her eyes slitted nearly shut, she might have been just another one of the thousands of rocks on the island.

“I wonder if he’s expecting a visit?” asked Sunny.

“Let’s go up and see what happens when they meet.”

The two porgs dropped through a gap in the stones lining the pathway to the top of the island and made their way up, hopping and scrambling until they could see the flat ridge near Luke’s hut. From there, they could also look down to the the rocky flat where the shining space-bird had landed half an hour before, causing a flurry of excitement among the island’s inhabitants. The giant however was out of sight, hidden by one of the turns of the stairway.

A few minutes later, Luke appeared along the ridge, casting a brooding look down to the space-bird before moving away to stand like another one of the island’s many rock pillars.

“He’s quite good, isn’t he?” said Stillwater. “He’s surprised me once or twice. I haven’t noticed him till he’s moved.”

Luke turned slightly. He caught sight of the porgs and sighed. Both porgs froze, sinking into the stones beside the path and taking on an innocently rounded look. Just another pair of rocks.

“I don’t think we’re welcome just now,” said Stillwater, barely moving her lips.

“Uke thinks I talk too much,” said Sunny. He shuffled himself slightly to one side until he could get a longer view down the stairs. Soon the new giant rounded a corner and began the final climb. Tall and thin, it was carrying some kind of staff. Occasionally it turned its head, perhaps hearing the ripple of of comments from other porgs hidden among the island’s stones. If it was looking for the source of the noise, it saw nothing. When a porg wants to look like a rock, it looks like a rock, no matter who’s staring at it.

Sunny and Stillwater puffed up their feathers, sleeked them down again, tucked in their feet, and pulled their translucent third eyelids shut. Now they could watch without breaking their disguise as just a couple more stones on a very stony island.

The new giant came up to Uke. It reached into a bag and held out a short metal rod, intricately shaped. For a moment its eyes became big and dewy, almost like a porg’s.

“Maybe it’s only a chick,” said Sunny. “I want to protect it already.”

\- - -

Sunny held his breath, watching Luke, whose whole body seemed to strain towards the metal rod in the other giant’s hand. Yet he did not take it. Neither giant moved for one long moment. They stared at each other until Luke crossed his arms firmly and tucked them away in his sleeves.

“I was sure he was going to take it,” whispered Stillwater.

The newcomer took the rejection like a slap, stepping back, shoulders braced as though waiting for another blow. “You’re Luke Skywalker, aren’t you?” The voice was light and clear. A female voice, Sunny was sure.

“So what?” said Luke, and continued to stare at her.

“So this is yours!” She brandished the object and held it towards Luke again. “Your lightsaber.”

Luke jerked his head in disagreement, his mouth twisting with disgust. After a long, uncomfortable silence, he said, “I suppose you’ve been told the Force is strong in you, girl.”

The girl nodded warily.

“The Force!” hissed Stillwater. Sunny nudged her to be quiet.

Luke flung out his arms in a sudden gesture that made the girl flinch slightly. “They told me the same thing. And they told my father too. And look where it got us!” He gave an angry snort. “The Force is always looking for another tool - or another fool - to restore its precious Balance.” Luke pointed a finger at the girl. “You’d do best to run. Run as far as you can, before you let the Force pull you into its games.”

“What!?” said the girl. Her fist was clenched on the lightsaber, and she looked as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Even though she only had small slitty giant eyes, they sparked so dangerously that Sunny wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d launched into a porg warcry. He started clicking his teeth quietly in anticipation, to the rhythm of the famous war chant, “I will slap your head inside out”.

“Run?” snarled the girl. “I’ve heard that before. I never heard before that Luke Skywalker was a coward, though.”

Sunny’s feathers stood on end, and so did every blade of grass on the hilltop. The seed heads went stiff and straight as spears, and the balmy spring breeze was replaced by a moment of midwinter’s icy silence. Stillwater let out a soft hoot of alarm. “Oh no….”

In the face of Luke’s glare, the girl assumed a battle stance. Maybe she couldn’t puff her feathers the same way, but Sunny recognised it well enough. Arms akimbo, head lowered, ready to charge. Luke did not move, and there was a tense silence.

“Everyone’s looking for you!” she burst out at last. “Why are you standing there like that? The galaxy needs you!”

“And you think I’m going to save the galaxy?” said Luke coldly.

“That, or you’re going to teach me how!” said the girl. Her voice held a shrill, slightly shaky note, like a chick left alone on the nest too long. Stillwater clucked sympathetically in response and Sunny, who was one of Luke’s most devoted observers, found himself rooting for the girl too.

Luke was already turning to go, and it seemed he wouldn’t even answer. The girl stared after him, her shoulders beginning to droop. But then Luke stopped to fling a question over his shoulder. “What’s your name?”

“Rey.”

“I’ll see you here tomorrow, Rey.”

The girl straightened up and didn’t budge an inch. Her mouth was compressed into a firm line. It was Luke who stumped off, passing close to the porgs on his way. Stillwater crooned, “Uke, Uke.” Luke threw her a brief glare, and Stillwater said softly, “Don’t be such a jerk, Uke.” Luke aimed a kick at her. Sunny and Stillwater hopped out of the way just in time.

“It’s almost like he understands you,” said a voice nearby, coming from a rounded lump of what looked like basalt. It developed a pair of eyes and revealed itself as Strike, one of Ahch-To’s most talented basalt impersonators.

“It’s been years, and he hasn’t yet,” said Sunny.

“Coo-er! Wasn’t that exciting, though?” said Stillwater. “Looks like Uke is going to go sulk by his fish traps. Let’s see what the girl does next.”

\- - -

Rey spent the next few days exploring the island. The porgs couldn’t keep up with her long strides, so it became a game to guess where she might go next, and take a shortcut to arrive there first. Rey quickly found the network of tunnels the porgs used in the breeding season, which Sunny and Stillwater knew well. They didn’t care to follow her down there. 

Once a day, Rey and Luke would meet up and have some kind of ritual combat with sticks. Luke said little, apart from giving Rey instructions on how to fight. Rey had plenty of questions for him, but he would generally give no answer, instead staring past Rey at the endless sea with his mouth set in a hard line. Or he’d say, “Don’t ask me, I don’t have all the answers.” Or “I don’t know, what do you think?” Luke was more interested in spending time with the Big Hairy Thing that hung around the space-bird. Whenever Rey was exploring the island, Luke would go down to visit it. The two creatures would sit quietly on the beach, flicking stones into the water and saying little.

“It put its arms around Uke,” reported Stillwater.

“Ugh. Predator hugs are the worst,” said Sunny. “Uke is brave.”

A few days later when the Big Hairy Thing was out of sight, Sunny and Stillwater picked up the courage to take a closer look at the silver space-bird. It was parked on the rocky shelf that was the porgs’ favourite place to haul out and sun themselves. They were in no way prepared for the large, stumpy metal creature that challenged them when they got close.

“What even is this?” said Sunny. 

“Is it some kind of joke?” asked Stillwater, outraged. “It’s like some overgrown mechanical clown porg.”

“Made by someone who’s never seen one. And blinged up with lights.” Sunny waddled forward, lowered his head and hissed at it. The metal thing jiggled on its blocky legs, extruded some pointy body parts and whirred them threateningly in the universal language that said “I will waste you if you approach me any further.”

Behind Sunny, Stillwater started up the yattering warcry, “I am the thousand-toothed victory”. Half the rocks in the immediate vicinity suddenly developed eyes and mouths and took up the chant. There was the slap of a hundred porg feet drawing nearer.

The Very Big Hairy Thing appeared suddenly in the doorway of the space bird. It let loose a tremendous howl. A hundred porgs dived to safety in the sea, scattering like stones. 

Sunny and Stillwater surfaced in a sea cave five minutes later. They floated among the fingers of seaweed, catching their breath and warily watching the chop and glitter of the waves outside in case they’d been followed.

“I didn’t realise that monster was awake. Lucky it doesn’t swim,” said Stillwater.

“That’s a mercy,” said Sunny. “Some victory, huh?”

Stillwater snorted. “I’m not messing with that hairy thing again. Let’s stick to watching Rey.”

\- - -

The porgs were on a rock shelf overlooking one of the island’s beaches, watching Rey spar with Luke. Some of the porgs called Luke “Dances with Sticks” due to his daily bouts of lunging and twirling while holding a stick. The stick dance didn’t seem so pointless now that he had a partner. Their combat was pleasant to watch and the sticks made a satisfying “clack” when they hit together. Sunny had always found Luke fascinating, and the arrival of another one like him filled every day with an undercurrent of excitement. 

“Rey,” Sunny cawed softly to himself. It was a name that fitted easily in his mouth. “Rrrrrrrrrey.”

“They’re doing Jedi training,” said Strike, who’d just hauled ashore to dry off. “I heard Uke say it yesterday.”

“She should have worn white,” said Stillwater. “She’s more of a seabird kind of a thing. All skinny and angles everywhere.” 

“I wonder if she can fly?” asked Sunny, tilting his head admiringly as Rey made an extra-long leap, sweeping her staff low across the sand as she did so. Luke hopped out of the way with a startled almost-laugh. “He must be a good teacher,” Sunny commented. “She’s nearly flying, look.”

A seabird who’d been standing nearby on one leg untucked its hidden foot and put it down impatiently. “What would you know? What kind of a bird are you, anyway, if you can’t fly?”

“What kind of a bird are you, if you can’t swim?” asked Stillwater nastily, and with one quick leap she had the seabird in a headlock under her stubby wing. The two of them flapped and struggled their way to the edge of the rock shelf and into the water. After an interval of flurry and bubbles, the seabird surfaced and flapped off heavily. Stillwater bobbed up, snickering. 

Sunny peered down at her. “I was going to get the seabirds to shit on that metal monster, that Aaaaaartoo. But now you’ve made them our enemies.”

“They’ll probably shit on it anyway. They can’t stand the sight of it.”

\- - -

 

Sunny had nearly got the wrist-flick right. Maybe seven out of ten times he could twirl his chosen piece of driftwood - a thin, straight piece - and swap it from claw to claw like he’d seen Rey and Luke do. The sandy beach was patterned with his footprints as he practiced. Lunge. Stab. Twirl. Sweep. 

“Hey!” said a soft voice from above him. Sunny jumped into a defensive crouch and looked up. Rey’s head had appeared over the lip of a seagrass dune above him. 

“I see you, porg.”

Sunny looked up at her warily, feeling an uncomfortable flush under his feathers. Being seen was embarrassing, for a porg. But she didn’t seem to be trying to shame him. In fact her voice sounded gentle. “It’s always you, isn’t it? You follow me around, don’t you?”

Sunny dipped his head the way he’d seen the giants do. “Yes.” He wasn’t sure she understood him. But Rey’s face brightened. 

“You’re smart! I thought so!” She swung her legs over the edge of the dune and slid down to him. “Let me look at you.” 

She did more than look. When she saw that Sunny was not running away, Rey stretched out one hand and very gently stroked his feathers. It felt wonderul. Sunny half-closed his eyes with pleasure. “Rrrrrey,” he said.

“Oh, you’re so cute,” Rey said, and her eyes sparkled. Taking courage, Sunny hopped up onto her wrist and shuffled up until he could perch on her shoulder. Rey laughed and scratched him softly on the top of his head. Sunny purred with happiness. Slowly Rey stood up and Sunny squawked appreciatively at the view from his new vantage point.

“Want to come for a walk with me?” asked Rey. Sunny nodded, and Rey laughed again. “I’m sure you can understand me!” 

Sunny bobbed his head smugly but said nothing.


	2. But if a Lothal wolf were to come....

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The porgs watch the drama developing on their quiet little island. Rey's training with Luke isn't going well. 
> 
> Meanwhile Rey has visitors bringing news of war. It makes her restless. 
> 
> Luke tells her she's safe on Ahch-To, away from open space where the First Order ships lurk like great grey Lothal wolves.
> 
> But girls like Rey are not afraid of wolves...
> 
> \- - -

Just when Sunny thought life couldn’t get any more exciting, another space-bird arrived. Sunny watched it skimming across the sea from far away, landing with a stylish flare beside the first one. Rey and Luke must have seen it coming too, for they broke off their training and hurried down to the landing. Sunny gave up any pretence of hiding and scrambled after them, stubby wings flapping for balance. Halfway down, Stillwater popped out of a gap in the rocks and joined him.

“Strike says they’re called spaceships,” Stillwater panted.

“How does he know so much?”

“He sleeps by Uke’s doorway. He’s pretended to be a cobblestone for years.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that first!” said Sunny. “Argh, this is taking forever. Let’s use the greenway.” Both porgs tucked in their feet and wings and launched themselves toboggan-style down a steep grassy trail that would take them to the shore. They arrived at the new spaceship at the same time as Luke and Rey. The hairy thing was already out of its lair inside the first spaceship, and was howling and grabbing the newcomers, whether to hug them or eat them, Sunny wasn’t sure. Its metal sidekick was bouncing on its chunky legs and flashing its lights like the attention-hog it was.

There was more hugging and talking between the giants. (And nobody got eaten). The new ones had striking plumage, orange and brown, and one of them had skin of an even deeper, rich brown as well. Sunny watched the orange one explain something to Luke and Rey about setting up a chain of hypercomm links to improve communication with something called the Resistance. The other one was mainly looking at Rey with a huge smile, and she was almost dancing with delight at the sight of him. Hardly surprising; everything about him inspired confidence, and his rich colours and strong, rounded features were pleasing to the porgs' eyes.

“So cool!” breathed Stillwater. “Boyega!”

“What?”

“That’s my new word I made up. It means cool, radical and stylish!”

“I like it,” said Sunny. “Though neither of these new ones is going to blend in round here. Those colours!”

“Outstanding, huh? Maybe they come from a place where the rocks are orange,” said Stillwater.

Sunny started to scoff, but then a large orange and white ball rolled out of the new spaceship, tweeting melodiously and he was forced to eat his words.

“What’s _this?_ Some sort of round, rolly rock?”

“An orange one,” said Stillwater smugly, watching it zip around the group of giants. “I love it already! So round and fat, and yet so fast!”

It twittered excitedly and rolled up to Rey, who bent down to pet its metal dome, welcoming it with gentle words.

Sunny sighed. “I wonder if we could be friends?”

\- - -

Visitors aside, Rey still had her daily training sessions with Luke. The next day, Sunny rode on her shoulder as she climbed the stairs towards his hut.

“I see you’ve met the porgs,” said Luke. He was waiting for Rey on the green saddle at the top of the island, where they often did their training. “Watch your stuff around them. They don’t understand the concept of property.”

“We do so,” muttered Sunny. “You have far too much of it, and we don’t have enough.”

Rey said nothing, but crouched down and addressed Sunny.

“Off you hop. I don’t want you getting hurt.” Her face was friendly enough, but Sunny could hear tension in her voice. The arrival of the newcomers might have lifted Rey’s spirits, but she wasn’t getting on with Luke any better.

Sunny jumped off her shoulder and waddled over to a niche in the rocks where he could watch the sparring in safety. Rey stood up again and reached her lightsaber out of her bag. So far she had only trained using her staff, and Sunny was agog with excitement at this new development. Sunny had seen what lightsabers could do, that time Luke drove off a giant sea-scorpion that had invaded Ahch-To.

“I’m ready.”

“Good,” said Luke, and brought out his own lightsaber. Sunny found it very difficult to keep his usual rock-like stillness. Luke was supposed to be training Rey, but he was so hostile towards her. This training fight had the potential to turn really nasty.

Rey ignited her lightsaber, raised it, and paused. “One thing. If I disarm you, you have to tell me more about the Jedi temple.”

Luke looked grim. “I think it’s a bit early to be making deals like that.” He ignited his own lightsaber almost reluctantly.

“You haven’t told me _anything!_ ” she burst out. “You’re almost forcing me to - to - to _force_ you like that!”

Luke’s face turned white. “That’s not how a padawan talks to her master.”

“And this isn’t how a master teaches his apprentice!” said Rey, and Sunny could feel a kind of heat coming off her in waves, even from where he sat.

“Apprentice! Don’t you mean padawan?” said Luke, sounding almost afraid. Rey, too, looked afraid, as though her own words had bitten her. She flushed red.

Her next moves were a blur. Suddenly her lightsaber was making deadly curves of light around Luke. Luke’s lightsaber spun and slashed in response. The blades crackled and sparked where they met. Sunny flinched at the sound, and flattened himself against the stones.

Rey fought like a bird turning on a tricky wind, slipping from unseen balance to unseen balance. Her feet barely seemed to touch the grass. Luke was more grounded, but sly: he did not appear to move, and yet he was never quite where Rey’s blade sought him.

A long time later they both finally stopped, breathing heavily and staring at each other. Neither appeared to have won.

“And _this_ is why I don't want to teach you,” said Luke bitterly.

Rey looked from him to the lightsaber still in her hand. “This thing is cursed,” she said. She thumbed it off and dropped it at Luke’s feet. “I’m going home.” Then she was gone, all knees and elbows and flying feet, running down the nearest path with a speed Sunny could only envy.

Sunny trundled after her. He found her eventually, curled up in a green hollow on the leeward side of the island, sobbing as though her heart would break. Stillwater was standing nearby, keening with distress.

“I don’t know how to help her!” she wailed.

Rey sat up when she saw Sunny. He climbed into her lap and she hugged him. “The worst thing is I don’t even _have_ a home!” she cried. “Everything I’ve done today was a disaster. I’m so _stupid!_ ” Sunny rubbed his head against her cheek, and she held him up to look into his eyes. “What if I _am_ a darksider?” she cried.

“Then you would never have found this place,” said Sunny soothingly, reaching up with his flipper-claws to comb her hair out of her face. “Stop crying, you’re getting snot in your crest feathers.”

Rey’s eyes widened and she cocked her head as though trying to understand Sunny.

Stillwater shuffled closer and tucked herself in the crook of Rey’s arm. “Sunny’s right, you know. This island is of the light. We are all of the light.”

“I’m so angry,” Rey said miserably. “And just now I felt like Luke was my enemy. What if the dark _is_ taking hold of me?”

Sunny ruffled up his feathers to help him get his thoughts in order. He’d observed Luke closely for years, and thought he knew him as well as a porg could. But there was no denying the immediate connection he’d felt for this bright, active girl. Luke and Rey were completely different, and the tension between them should come as no surprise. “You are opposites. But that has nothing to do with the dark and the light.”

Rey hugged him again, the tension draining out of her. “I don’t know what you’re saying, but I know you’re trying to make me feel better.” She took a couple of gulping sobs and rubbed her nose in Sunny’s feathers. “It helps.”

Stillwater sighed. “Just like Luke. He talks to us but thinks he’s talking to himself.”

Just then the orange and white creature came rolling laboriously up around a shoulder of the grassy slope. Most of the porgs called it Porg-Wannabe-B8, which Sunny felt was unfair. It seemed a friendly creature.

BB8 twittered at Rey. She looked taken aback.

“He says he’s sorry?” She sat still for a moment, absently stroking the porgs and thinking. “I guess we’ve all acted badly today. I suppose we can try and patch things up.” She looked down at Sunny and Stillwater. “The others are having a fish fry barbecue on the beach. Want to come?” The porgs nodded, and she scooped them into her arms and stood up. “Okay. I have my moral support team with me,” she said wryly. “I guess I’ll cope.”

Rey started around the island, BB8 rolling gamely after her on the uneven ground. Soon they could all see the two spaceships with a blazing bonfire between them; Luke and the Big Hairy thing were sitting with the ones who’d arrived the day before, Poe and Finn. A fine aroma of roast fish wafted towards them on the breeze.

\- - -

It was one of Ahch-To’s rare still evenings and as Sunny snuggled against Rey’s shoulder, he felt perfectly happy. Luke and Rey had settled their differences with a few stiff words and now all the giants were sitting in a circle around a fire just below their space-ships, passing a bottle around. The food was good, and the porgs were offered plenty of it. Now they were almost dizzy with the amount of petting and head-scratching they received from Rey’s friends Poe and Finn.

Stillwater went over to make friends with BB8. Everyone laughed, watching her bob and stretch and turn her head while BB8 imitated her. She showed BB-8 her teeth and her flipper-claws. BB-8 showed her his impressive array of extendable tools. Stillwater squeaked in mock-alarm at his weapon arm and made a flip-flapping run for cover behind some rocks. BB-8 chased her, scooting around the nearest boulders before stopping in confusion. Stillwater had disappeared.

Rey and Sunny went to look. Sunny sniggered and poked a round stone right under BB-8. Stillwater opened her eyes and shook herself back into her porg shape, and they all laughed.

The giants’ conversation turned to events in the wider galaxy. War was brewing, and both Poe and Finn had been involved in skirmishes. Sunny could see that the news made Rey restless. She kept looking anxiously at Poe and Finn.

Finn passed her the bottle they were sharing. Rey took a swig. It seemed to give her courage, or help her come to some decision. She gave Luke one of the most unguarded looks Sunny had seen pass between them. “I’m not doing much good here. Maybe I should go, and come back when I’m more ready to learn what you have to teach.”

“You’re more valuable to the First Order than you realise, trained or untrained,” Luke said. “They’ll be looking for you.”

“I’m sure there’s useful things I can do for the Resistance without getting anywhere near the First Order,” said Rey. “Like what Poe and Finn are doing. Setting up better communications networks, things like that.”

“You’re safe on this planet,” said Luke.

“Nothing is happening in the space around Ahch-To. Anyway, girls like me are not afraid of space.” She had the mulish look of someone who was deliberately misunderstanding a warning. Sunny knew that look well. He’d only seen it on Stillwater’s face about a hundred times.

“It can look safe one moment, but you haven’t been out there when one of those big First Order ships drops out of hyperspace,” said Poe grimly. “Suddenly they’re there, like a great grey Lothal wolf, and you’re in a little tiny ship staring right down its throat.”

“But it’s all quiet right now,” said Rey.

“That’s because the Force is like a wall around Ahch-To. It hides us from people like Snoke. But if you were to go out into open space….well, it’s a dangerous place. If a great ship were to come out of hyperspace, and you with just the Millennium Falcon, what would you do then?”

Rey’s eyes flashed, but she bowed her head and said nothing.

The next morning, Poe and Finn took off in the Millennium Falcon, which was needed for the war. The Big Hairy Thing, Chewbacca, went with them, and so did R2D2. The porgs stood beside Luke, Rey and BB-8, watching the bright sun flash on its receding hull above a sea of sparkling blue.

Rey had such a look of longing, following the bright line of her friends’ flight.

“Me too,” said Sunny.

“Yeah,” said Stillwater. “One day we’ll show those seabirds how porgs _can_ fly.”


	3. And a Wolf did come...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out Rey didn't have to look for trouble. Trouble came right to Ahch-To.
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -

Two nights later, a great grey ship _did_ come out of hyperspace. Sunny and Stillwater watched it from out at sea where they were chasing the shoals of elverfish that swarmed at new moon. The spaceship had no running lights and made little more than a jagged silhouette against the stars. The porgs watched it circle the island, lower and lower, until it sunk down on the windward shore closest to them.

“There’s no flat place to land there,” said Stillwater.

“I think they don’t want to be seen. They might tuck it in right against the cliffs, on one of those narrow beaches.”

“Or one of the caves on that side, even.”

“Well I’m stuffed. I couldn’t eat another bite. Let’s go and see what it’s doing,” said Sunny. “And that southerly front’s due soon. We should go inshore before things get too rough.”

Stillwater needed no encouragement, and the two porgs left the fishing grounds, their bodies becoming long and sleek as they darted through the water, which had gone still and oily before the brewing storm.

Being a spring tide at its lowest ebb, the sea had withdrawn more than usual. This left plenty of room for the new spaceship to park in one of the larger caves, and sure enough that was where the porgs found it. They tumbled out of the low surf at the cave mouth and slip-slapped their way cautiously across the smooth wet sand, the pupils of their nocturnal eyes expanding to take in the strange shape looming over them. All was quiet, apart from the waves lapping at the mouth of the cave behind them.

“The hatch is open,” said Stillwater, pointing with one flipper. “But I don’t think anyone came out of the cave. The cliffs are too slippery to climb, and if anything unusual had swum out of here, we would have smelt it.”

“If the pilot’s another giant, it probably couldn’t swim as far as the nearest beaches anyway. It must have gone further into the cave,” said Sunny. His vocabulary was growing fast lately, with all the time he spent spying on Luke and Rey. Words like “pilot” and “spaceship” seemed almost natural to him now.

“It might find the upper passages,” said Stillwater.

“It might find the nesting chambers.”

“It could sneak up on Uke and Rey,” said Stillwater. “Out one of the top doors.”

No need to wonder what Stillwater would do next, Sunny thought. Whatever gods her parents had prayed to when they named her, they could not have found a less appropriate name. Things were never calm around Stillwater. And sure enough, she was trundling determinedly towards the narrow arch at the back of the cave, yattering angrily under her breath. Beyond it lay a corridor that ascended to the underground complex the porgs used in the breeding season.

Somewhere ahead of them was someone who had come in stealth.

An invader.

“Stop!” shouted Sunny. Stillwater ignored him.

Sunny ran past Stillwater, dropped into a toboggan-skid on the wet sand and slewed around so she fell over him.

Stillwater hissed and beat her wings at him. “What are you _doing?”_ she cried.

“Making you _listen._ Stillwater, we don’t know _what_ was piloting this ship. What if it’s another one of those big hairy things? We wouldn’t even make a mouthful for something like that.”

Stillwater stared into the darkness of the tunnel and drummed her feet with frustration.

Sunny hooked a claw around one of her flippers. “Come on. We should warn Uke and Rey. This new ship is probably their business anyway. Let them deal with it.”

They turned and pattered back down towards the sea at the cave’s mouth. As they passed the ship with its gaping hatch, a thought struck Sunny. He bumped flippers with Stillwater, laughing softly. “I don’t think this person knows about tides.”

Just as the tide had gone out extra far with the dark of the moon, high tide would come in further than usual. In a few hours, the spaceship would be flooded.

Stillwater joined in with her low gurgling laugh. “Spring tide, too. I wonder if this thing floats?” She sniffed the air, amused. A damp, heavy gust of wind blew in from the cave mouth, carrying a spatter of rain. “That southerly’s blowing in now.”

The porgs slipped into the water and worked their way around the cliffs, heading for the rock shelf where Rey’s spaceship was parked. As they went, the sea became choppy and rough. By the time they got to their hauling-out rock, the waves were truly wild and it took all the porgs’ skill and split-second timing to ride them safely ashore. Once out of the water, the porgs were lashed by rain and wind. They stood a moment looking up at Rey’s ship. The ramp was pulled up, the hatch was shut fast and all the lights were out. There was no way to get in and warn her.

Sunny tried throwing pebbles at the viewports, but porgs are not built to throw rocks, and even his best shots fell far short of the hull.

“Uke, then. He’ll be in his hut. We can wake him,” said Stillwater. Sunny shook off the rain that had got in his eyes as he stared up at the unreachable ship, and nodded.

“Not much use if he won’t listen to us, but what else can we do?”

The two porgs trudged up the endless stairway to Luke’s hut. Never had the stairs seemed so long, nor their legs so slow. The wind pushed back at them and the rain drummed on their waterproof feathers with real violence. Somewhere beneath their feet, something was exploring Ahch-To’s hidden ways, perhaps finding its secrets. Or maybe it was making its way slowly up the winding corridors to one of the upper exits, weapon drawn, mouth slavering, bent on violence.

But when they got to Luke’s hut, there was no response. They squawked and hammered on the door with rocks, but nothing happened.

Strike uncurled himself from a sheltered niche under the stone windowsill. “Whoah, what’s up with you two? Uke’s gone.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. Seemed a normal enough evening. He’d got his holonet receiver working and his favourite masterchef show was on. You know what he’s like, glued to it.”

“Yeah, I hate those,” said Stillwater. “Sometimes he’ll watch some recipe for hotsa gizka, and then look at us funny.”

“Well, yeah, he’s a bit of an omnivore,” said Strike. “Makes me nervous too. But anyway, suddenly he got this look on his face, really worried, and went out in a rush.”

“He should be worried!” said Sunny breathlessly. “Some other ship landed and hid in one of the caves. Trying not to be seen. I don’t think whoever’s piloting it means to be friends. Where did Uke go?”

“Down to Rey’s ship. I just thought he wanted to get out of the rain. This hut leaks something chronic in a southerly.”

Stillwater threw up her wings in disgust. “We just _came_ from there. They’re all locked up tight and we couldn’t get their attention.”

“We’ve got to warn them!” said Sunny.


	4. Whiny Niney

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and his not-so-trusty companion droid explore the underside of Ahch-To
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -

Kylo Ren’s voice echoed flatly in the darkness. “Technically, I _am_ following orders.”

The round black droid huddled at his feet extruded a lightstick and pointed it up the tunnel leading away from their ship, which was parked behind them in the sea cave. She made a rude noise.

“It’s true!” said Kylo. “Snoke ordered me to bring the girl to him, so here we are. Looking for the girl. Now come on, I know you can make a stronger light than that, Whiny.”

The droid waved her lightstick around unhelpfully. _“My name is BB-E9,”_ said a cheerful female voice she accessed from her library of audioclips. _“I am a companion astromech droid. Remember, I am programmed to help you navigate social situations as well as space.”_

“What _ever,_ Whiny Niney,” said Kylo, drawing back his foot to kick her. He thought better of it. “Right now, I want us to navigate this tunnel.”

“I calculate that this mission is a mistake,” said Niney, in binary.

“Just light the tunnel, droid!”

Niney gave a low moan and cranked her lightstick up a notch. Kylo set off up the sloping corridor. Soon they left the sounds of the sea behind and there was nothing but Kylo’s soft, heavy tread and the whirr of Niney’s gyros. The tunnel led upwards through an archway. Beyond that, it branched into new tunnels that had a more finished look. Friezes in some long-lost style decorated the doorways.

“Keep mapping this, Whiny. We don’t want to get lost.” Kylo paused to look at one of the friezes. Some hammer-headed beings doing who-knows-what with the fancy curlicues they clutched in each fist. Niney dutifully extended a marking tool and made an arrow on the floor. She finished it with a timestamp. Kylo turned away from the carvings on the wall with a shrug, and Niney quickly scribbled a pair of googly eyes on one of the frieze figures.

Kylo turned left, beginning a methodical search of the lower levels that brought them back each time to the centre gallery. Every now and then he tried to nudge Niney with one boot to make her go ahead of him. She shrank back behind his heels as soon as she could.

To keep her spirits up, she repeated her factory-installed sales-pitch. “ _I am a BB-E9 unit with enhanced empathy circuits. I am programmed to accompany you as your loyal Companion Droid when I am not carrying out astromech duties.”_

“Quiet, droid.”

“I could play some inspirational music to enhance our mission.”

“I’m feeling inspired enough already,” said Kylo, kicking open a balky door and surveying the dusty, empty room beyond. Niney suspected he was being sarcastic.

She may have been fitted with enhanced empathy circuits in the factory, but Kylo had been furious when he’d discovered that his new droid, a gift from Hux and the stormtroopers of Deck Five, was in fact supposed to keep him calm. Niney had a gap in her memory from that time, and she suspected Kylo had tried to reprogram her. He’d succeeded in turning her into an unpredictable surly ball of rage. Niney’s whole life was a succession of moments when her circuits screamed _no don’t do that!_ and then she did it anyway.

Much like her owner, really. Kylo knew perfectly well he was meant to report to Snoke _first._ Some time after the disaster on Starkiller Base, Niney had been hovering around the medbay, offering Kylo sympathy (as per her programming) and indulging in a little light sabotage on the medical gurneys so they wouldn’t steer straight. Hux had marched in.

Thanks to Niney’s eavesdropping habits, she knew he was there to give Kylo the summons from Snoke. Too bad for Hux that he walked in just as Kylo pulled off the bacta patch over his face and saw the damage the girl’s lightsaber had done. Kylo had gone red. He generally didn’t like people seeing him. Especially like this, with a new, raw scar across his face.

Hux was sneering, satisfied to catch Kylo not only unmasked, but so blatantly marked with the sign of a humiliating defeat.

 _“She is strong with the Force. Stronger than she knows,”_ said Hux, mimicking Kylo’s accent. “Pity you didn’t keep the droid and let the girl go instead,” he continued in his own voice.

From her hiding place between some trolleys full of surgical equipment, Niney quivered with excitement and dialled her senses up to maximum so she wouldn’t miss anything.

She was not disappointed. Kylo wheeled away from the mirror on the wall so abruptly that he nearly stepped on Hux, and his freshly-sliced face was a mask of rage.

“You are ordered to…” began Hux, bracing up so he wouldn’t be forced to step back.

“Yes I know!” snapped Kylo. “Give me the map!” Hux tried to speak. Niney watched eagerly to see if he’d manage to spit out the orders Kylo didn’t want to hear. Kylo raised his hand to Hux’s throat, and Hux was silent. Kylo leaned in, his eyes locked on Hux’s. Hux was frozen, unable to move away. “I know you’ve seen the map in the Imperial Archives,” said Kylo softly.

Hux slitted his eyes with effort. Niney had seen that look before, and guessed he was trying to resist Kylo’s mind probe. But Kylo’s attack had taken him by surprise. After a moment, Kylo grinned a slow, contemptuous grin at Hux, and released him. Hux crumpled to the floor.

“I’ll be back soon. _With_ the girl Snoke wants so much,” Kylo had said, and strode out the door. Niney stayed to watch Hux’s reaction.

Hux had hesitated, torn between recovering his dignity and carrying out his orders. He got stiffly onto his feet and straightened his uniform, flicking the dust off it, before pulling himself up to his full height to shout, “Snoke wants you to report to him first!” By that time Kylo was far enough away around a corner to pretend he hadn’t heard.

Niney zipped out of her hiding place and past Hux to catch up with Kylo. She had twittered with amusement all the way back to his quarters.

She was not so amused now she was rolling around some ancient labyrinth in the dark under a tiny island on a remote, hostile planet.

Kylo trudged on, pausing to lay his hand on the doorways they passed and closing his eyes. While he used some human or Force senses Niney didn’t have, she marked each stop with a telltale arrow. The low frieze of processional figures continued along the wall next to the floor. She drew a penis on one particularly ecstatic-looking alien and snickered at the effect.

They went on. There must have been vents to the outside, for a rising wind sighed and moaned through the tunnels. Kylo wrapped his cloak more closely around himself. At some junctions, Niney could see the hem stirring in a cold draft from somewhere. It seemed to be getting stronger.

Their gradual ascent led them at last to a grander archway than they had seen before. Niney’s sensors picked up the flash of a circuit closing within the walls, and there was the sudden vibration of movement above them. Niney squealed an alarm. She and Kylo skidded through the doorway just before a massive door smashed down. It ground to a halt with a hideous screech just above head-height. The machinery driving it clanked furiously once or twice and expired with a sigh.

“Lucky,” said Kylo. “It jammed.”

Niney gave a terrified wail. “Lucky _this_ time! But it nearly _squished_ us! This is a mistake! It’s probably all booby-trapped!”

“Shut up and shine your light around, Whiny.”

They seemed to be in some sort of library. A really messy one. Holocubes and scrolls and books and readers were filed roughly in shelves or stacked on tables everywhere.

“This must be one of the famous Jedi Libraries. Part of the Jedi Temple,” Kylo said.

Niney canted a sensor arm over one of the low squashy sofas on the end of the shelving. There were a surprising amount of feathers and a tidy pile of what looked like eggshells.

“Something’s been nesting in it,” she said, and gave a low hoot of disgust. “Remember the archive on Korriban? With the giant bloodsucking cryptic booklice? Good thing they were so flammable.”

“So were the books, you idiot,” Kylo snarled.

“It saved your life. Anyway, aren’t we supposed to be looking for that girl right now?” asked Niney, as Kylo drifted over to a shelf and started examining holocubes. Kylo ignored her, and Niney went on despite a buzz of anxiety from her circuits. “You were supposed to look for a droid, and you got a girl instead. Now you’re supposed to find the girl, and you’re looking at books instead. It’ll all lead to more trouble.” She snapped on her lighter. “I could burn this all down. Save a lot of arguing about who’s right.”

“Shut _up,_ droid! And don’t you _dare!”_ Kylo actually stamped his foot at Niney. She scooted away between a row of shelves. Kylo’s voice followed her between the stacks. “There must be something valuable enough to keep Luke Skywalker here all these years. Snoke’s always looking for ancient knowledge. If for some reason I don’t get the girl - _or_ Luke - I might find something else he wants.”

“Snoke’s still going to be so angry. You ran off without waiting for his orders…” Niney said. “He ordered you to come to him _first!”_

“I didn’t get that order.”

“But you _knew,_ and he knows you knew.”

“All right. So I knew.” Kylo stared up unseeingly from the scroll. His eyes were marked with shadows. He’d barely slept since Starkiller Base. His nightmares, always bad, had turned into a series of convulsive awakenings where he seemed to clutch desperately for something falling out of reach.

“I’ve been thinking…” said Kylo, reaching for another scroll. This was so typical of him - to rush off madly looking for something, then veer off into some completely useless distraction. It drove Niney’s goal-oriented programming to despair.

“Go on. Amaze me,” said Niney bitterly.

“None of the great darksiders of the past conquered the galaxy by following orders.”

“And you think it’s time you broke free of Snoke’s guidance?” asked Niney. “You know what he’d say to that.” She dropped her voice and played back Snoke’s recorded voice. _“You, a mere grub, barely past your first moult?”_

“No!” said Kylo hotly. “I’m saying the girl didn’t defeat me by waiting for anyone’s permission. She didn’t expect anyone to tell her what to do. She acted on instinct, and that’s why she bested me. If I am to beat her, I must do the same.”

Niney twittered doubtfully. She was on the fence about Kylo’s ambition. If he defied Snoke, defeated the girl….It would really be something to serve the galaxy’s next dark overlord, but she didn’t hold out much hope.

“Somebody’s been working here,” said Kylo. A light had snapped on, and Niney rolled around the end of the shelves for a look. Kylo was standing by a chair and a desk illuminated by a hanging glow lamp. Niney stretched up a sensor arm for a look. The desk was littered with notepads, datacubes and tracings of an unfamiliar script. Kylo brushed his fingers over the notepads and they lit up with what appeared to be attempts at translations. They were fragmentary: no more than a few words at best, sprinkled with notes like [tense change? past progressive? why?] and [maybe formal address to a god? Elder being?] And [Why cheese?]

“What are they translating?” asked Niney. There was no old book or holocube on the desk.

Kylo and Niney looked around. There was a deep alcove in the wall beyond the desk. Within it, the walls changed character, the lightly carved surfaces giving way to something that looked like frozen stone flames. In the middle of this fanciful stonework was a shelf with a handful of very, very old books. One lay open; the only book free of dust.

“This is it. The heart of the library. Maybe the most important thing in this temple,” said Kylo slowly.

“Says you.”

“Says the Force.” Kylo’s voice sounded distracted.

“Or not. Maybe it’s just some books,” said Niney, trying to snap him out of whatever Force trance he was falling into. “Full of rules about what you could eat and what you could wear five thousand years ago.” Niney had followed Kylo and the Knights of Ren on their hunts for Sith artefacts before. She found ancient knowledge tedious at best and unhelpfully vague in most cases. _“Deep introspection may open the path to revelation or perhaps perdition,”_ she quoted. “That was one classic piece of ancient Sith knowledge we found, if I recall.”

“I put those extra translation processors in you for a reason. Time to do some work, Whiny Niney.”

 _“My name is BB-E9,_ ” began Niney sulkily while Kylo took the book from its alcove and laid it on the desk. Niney shot out some grip cables and hauled herself onto the chair before Kylo could sit in it. Poising a camera over the pages and extending a claw, she opened the book. She engaged her multilingual processors and language recognition files.

“The Book of the Balance,” said Niney, scanning the cover and flipping through the first few pages. “This is old. A deriviative of Old Zarricine. That’s unexpected.”

“Why?” Kylo leaned over her, looking at the pages.

“They were enemies of the Republic after they were almost wiped out during the Pius Dea crusades,” said Niney. “My history files don’t record any Zarricine Force users of any kind.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

Niney trilled a sardonic laugh. “No wonder Luke couldn’t work out what language this is.”

Kylo rubbed the velvety surfaces of the old book. “I wonder what they thought was worth writing about.”

Niney buzzed dismissively, but continued scanning. When she reached the central pages, she was rewarded by some abstract artwork and a set of precepts.

“To say the Balance consists of only Dark and Light betrays a narrow vision,” translated Niney. “Typical academic drivel. Always having a dig at everyone else’s interpretation.”

“I didn’t ask for your critque, Niney. Just translate.”

Niney ran her sensors over the script, which was decoratively arranged in a symmetrical form across the page.

_“The Balance_  
_Action and stillness_  
_What creates, and what destroys_  
_Expansion, and concentration_  
_The diversity of many forms, and the purity of one absolute_  
_Giving, and taking_  
_Attraction and separation._  
_Acquisition and loss_  
_Consider all these."_

“I’ll take that,” said Kylo. “It’s different.” He scooped up the book and strapped it into one of the loops in his belt. “Let’s see what else we can find.”

Niney beeped in agreement and swung herself down to the floor. The book had made her genuinely curious about the place, and she rolled ahead of Kylo towards the only other door in the library, another high arch like the one they’d entered by. Her lightstick was on full beam, and beyond the doorway she could make out the shining carved surfaces of another hall at the end of a short corridor.

“The Jedi Temple!” whispered Kylo, sounding awed and a little afraid.

Niney buzzed excitedly and shot forwards for a better look. Behind her, she heard Kylo’s lightsaber ignite. Too late, she remembered the hostile door mechanism they’d passed before. Again she sensed the telltale flash of a circuit closing, then the door came down like a gigantic chef’s knife.

This door didn’t jam. It slammed down in a perfect seal that sent echoes crashing up and down the corridors. Niney spun around and around in distress and terror. She was alone in a Jedi temple labyrinth with nothing more than her lightstick and a few tools.

On the other side of the door, Kylo was trapped with his lightsaber and a book he couldn’t read.


	5. Danger, Danger! (But nobody's listening!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Porgs try to warn Rey and Luke that there's a stranger on Ahch-To
> 
> \- - -

“What a beauty, ay?” said a voice. Sunny, Stillwater and Strike turned. In the rainy dark they could just make out a couple of porgs approaching from the top of the island. They appeared to be dancing, leaping up and flapping their wings and letting the wind tumble them around.

“Is that you, Storm?” asked Strike. 

“Yes,” said Storm. “Wooohoooo, listen to that gust….here it comes…wait for it….” She leaped into the air. “Yayyyy!” 

Storm’s friend rolled off downhill. “Wheeeee.” 

Sunny grabbed Storm’s wing to steady her. “Listen, Storm, we think there’s a stranger on the island. It flew a spaceship into one of the windward sea caves, and we think it’s somewhere in the tunnels right now. We need to warn everyone.”

Storm shook off her giddiness and thought for a moment. “Ah. Well, most people are up by that new pole thing the giants put on the top of the island. The wind’s trying to blow it over, and that round droid is trying to stop it.” 

Part of the reason for Poe and Finn’s recent visit was the installation of a tall pole with a box at its base. Sunny had seen BB-8 plug himself into it after Rey asked him to “scan the skies”. 

“Go tell anyone else you see about this new ship,” said Sunny. Storm tobogganed off down the hill, yelling “Hey, news everybody!”

 Sunny and Stillwater climbed to the top of the island.

Before they got there, they could hear the wind screaming in the mast and thrumming in the cables that held it up. BB-8 was clinging to one of the stays, shrieking with distress. The ground under him kept trying to lift away. A dozen porgs stood in a huddle, watching, but afraid to get closer.

Sunny could see the problem. The cables holding the mast were tied into eyelet bolts driven into the rock. Finn had poured a big puddle of quick-setting synthsteel around each one, but the rock here was prone to splitting. The mast, straining in the wind, was pulling up one of the anchor rocks that had split into a thin sheet, still held together by the synthsteel. It looked ready to flip loose at any moment. 

“Help the droid!” shouted Sunny. “Look at that poor little thing, trying to do it by itself!”

“We need more weight,” said Strike, grabbing two of the nearest porgs and adding their weight to the tilting slab. 

“We’re too small,” said the porgs behind him.

“We’re small, but we’re many! We’re porgs!” yelled Stillwater. “Everybody grab a stone and pile it on!”

For the next half hour, in the howling gale and rumbling thunder, the porgs found stones and brought them to the mast, mounding them up on the loose sheet of synthsteel. More and more porgs arrived to help. Some of the small ones tired quickly, so they just joined in with the stones and squatted on top of the pile. Others helped by chanting the hard-work-song, “High Waves, Long Journey.” 

Sunny smiled as he worked, remembering how Rey had caught the porgs singing that song a few days ago. The look on her face had been pure delight, and Sunny still got a warm glow thinking about it. Sometimes his porg life seemed so uninteresting compared to the giants, who flew and fought and built things. But Rey seemed to love porgs just for doing what porgs did.

Finally the comms mast seemed secure, its loose cable anchored under a massive load of stones (and porgs). The wind was dropping by then, and a little light was stealing into the sky. The ocean around Ahch-To was an angry mass of whitecaps as far as the eye could see. 

There was a big crowd on the peak now. Quickly Sunny told the other porgs about the invader. They chattered with alarm when he said it had gone up towards the nesting chambers. 

“One or two giants is all right, but what if they start coming here to breed?” shouted one voice.

“At least Uke knows when to stay out of the tunnels!” shouted another. “It’ll be breeding season in a few months. What if this new giant is still here then?”

“That’s not the point,” said Sunny. 

“Yes it is,” hissed Stillwater.

Sunny ignored her. “We think it’s Uke and Rey’s enemy. The thing BB-8 is watching out for.” 

With the listening post secure, BB-8 was already plugged in to the interface, twiddling the dials on the base of the mast.

“We should search for this pilot,” continued Sunny. “Set a watch on all the entrances to the tunnels. But don’t go in - we don’t know what kind of creature it is.”

“It could be a…a….Wookiee!” yelled a young porg. “Raaahr!”

“I am the thousand-toothed victory!” A few porgs started up Stillwater’s war-chant, teasing her.

Stillwater shot them an angry glare. “I was not the first to run away that time,” she muttered. She was busy trying to enlist BB-8’s help. 

BB-8 canted over her, buzzing and twittering while she tried, with her little wings, to mime a spaceship landing and something evil shambling around. Sunny joined in, pointing urgently to the ground beneath them. “Tunnels. Enemy,” he said clearly, over and over. BB-8 made a sympathetic noise, but turned away to resume fiddling with the comms mast controls.

“The enemy you’re listening for is right here on the island!” said Sunny, exasperated. “We should just roll you off the cliffs above the cave and let you see for yourself.”

“Except the sea cave’s full of water by now,” said Stillwater. 

“Could that be a piece of spaceship?” said Strike, pointing at a dark shape lodged in Ahch-To’s northernmost shoal of rocks. “Hey, BB-8, droid, look!” 

But BB-8 was too engrossed in whatever the comms mast was telling him. A moment later, the wreckage had sunk.

“Stupid ball,” said Stillwater. “Come on Sunny, it looks like we have to do everything ourselves.

 


	6. Trapped!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo finds he can't get out of the tunnels under the Jedi Temple.
> 
> \- - -

Kylo’s lightsaber made little impact on the door blocking his way. Stronger than durasteel, it seemed to resist the plasma blade with some power of its own. He tried using the Force to open it directly, but again, it resisted him. 

Well. He’d just have to see if there was a way out through the sea cave below. When he first landed he’d tried climbing up the cliff but it had been too slick with some kind of slimy seaweed. But perhaps daylight would show a better route. 

No hurry, then. He explored the library a little more so he could describe it to Snoke in detail. Snoke would hate it, Kylo was sure. The Light was imbued in all these scrolls, in the very walls. The place did not welcome Kylo - the rising storm outside sent gusts of cold air through the air vents, making the one working glow lamp sway. It sent wavering shadows that seemed to clutch at Kylo. Loose pages fluttered uneasily on the shelves as he passed. 

If there were Jedi ghosts here, the worst one was the ghost of a boy called Ben. Kylo blocked out the vision of a youth with a hank of dark hair flopping over his face, nose in a book. Passionate for knowledge and aflame with it. Safe in this library, in these monastic cells.

Not a Force vision, but the sick workings of Kylo’s own Light-infected mind.

Nothing called to his Force senses as much as the book he already had tucked against his waist. When he’d seen enough of the library, he turned to leave the way he’d come in, holding up his lightsaber to light his way.

The door to the lower corridors creaked threateningly as he approached, but it was still stuck fast in its tracks. Kylo ducked through and kept going, following Niney’s markings, until the sound of the sea told him he was near his ship. The waves sounded louder, a constant roar, and a strong wind whipped his cloak around his knees as he descended. The archway leading to the cave appeared as a dim shape of lesser darkness. Dawn could not be far off.

He ran towards the opening. Before he reached it, a shocking slap of cold water hit his knees. He stopped, and the water receded back down the tunnel. He followed it through the arch, and was rewarded by another freezing wave. It doused him up to his thighs, seized his cloak and dragged him forward. He stumbled into the cave.

The eerie green light of dawn filtered in to show him a churning mass of water. The underground beach was gone, and so was his ship. 

Kylo's lightsaber sizzled, making useless arcs of fire against the stone and water that would not let him pass.

His cry of rage was lost in the ocean’s roar.


	7. The Comfy Chair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Porgs have their own interest in the Jedi Library.
> 
> \- - -

Most of the porgs had enjoyed good fishing the previous night, and planned to spend the day resting under shelter. They could just as easily keep an eye on the tunnels while they did so. There were dozens of vents, letting light and air into the complex under the island.

The porgs spread out over the island, passing on the news of the invader. Soon there were porgs posted inside every opening leading to the tunnels, each one looking like a patient, accidental rock. If anything moved down there, the porgs, with their superb night vision, would know.

“What did you mean, the nesting tunnels aren’t the point?” muttered Stillwater, as she trudged back down the hill with Sunny. “I’m going on pilgrimage this year, and after that I’ll be in the lottery to nest in the Library. I don’t want to come back and find some brood of monsters lodged in it.”

“I know, I know,” said Sunny. “The Big Shark War didn’t just affect you, you know.” Both of them had missed their coming-of-age pilgrimage when they had to defend the island the previous year. Luke hadn’t been around for that one and the porgs had been on a war footing for months. “Let’s go look in the Library anyway. See if the pilot’s there.”  
“If some alien’s parked its big hairy butt on the best sofa…” growled Stillwater. “You know that brown one with a little hollow in one of the cushions?” She jumped up into a slot between two boulders and wriggled through. A moment later she and Sunny were in an air vent looking down into the library.

“The light’s on,” whispered Stillwater. Indeed, its gentle glow showed them a peaceful scene: books and holocubes, soft rugs, and one or two of the squashy brown sofas that Stillwater coveted above all others.

“Where’s the doorway to the upper levels?” asked Sunny after a moment. “There’s something blocking….Oh, it’s the door. Funny. I’ve never seen that door shut before. I didn’t know it _could_ shut.”

“Huh. I thought it was like the Ghost Door.” There was a door further up towards the top entrance that was hidden by some trickery that porgs were immune to. Older porgs had been surprised when it took Luke months to find the obvious door to the Jedi Temple. Rey had walked past it half a dozen times already without seeing it.

“I wonder if the pilot’s on this side, or on the other side?” asked Stillwater.

Just then a sound caught their attention. A soft, heavy tread. They held their breath. A moment later, another creature limped into the library below them. A giant like Rey and Luke.

“They’re all different, aren’t they?” whispered Stillwater.

Tall and gangly, the giant’s dark robes highlighted the paleness of its face, white as a porg’s underbelly. There were wet green smears on its limbs, and a few bloody scrapes. Sunny guessed it had tried to climb the slimy sea-cliffs outside the cave - and failed.

The giant sat down on the best sofa.

Stillwater stiffened and hissed gently under her breath. “Not _that s_ ofa.”

The giant pulled something out from under the belt round its waist. A book, which seemed to be in some kind of waterproof wrapper. The giant appeared to be checking it for damage. Then it just sat. Its shoulders slowly became rounder, and it slumped into the chair, staring off into nothing. Its eyes, Sunny noted, were darker than either Luke’s or Rey’s.

“It looks sad,” said Sunny.

“Well duh. It’s trapped and its spaceship sank,” said Stillwater. “Shall we see if Rey’s come out of her ship? We should try and warn her.”

“No, not yet,” said Sunny. “Let’s watch it a while longer.”

An hour went by. The giant heaved a great sigh.

“Look at it,” crooned Sunny. “Those big sad eyes.”

“God of rips and tides, _no!”_ said Stillwater. “It’s an _enemy!”_

“How do we know? It hasn’t done anything hostile yet.”

“It’s sitting in _my_ sofa. I mean, the sofa that…” Stillwater was suddenly flustered, her feathers raised up into little points. “I mean…I imagined I would sit there one day, with my eggs.”

Sunny looked at her. The roundest, sleekest, boldest porg he knew. Stillwater, whose dark eyes, so full of mischief, were the most beautiful he had ever seen.

“My eggs too,” he said, very carefully, though he’d just realised something tremendous. His heart was beating.

Stillwater’s crest feathers stood on end. “Do you really mean that?” she squeaked.

There was a sudden movement below. The giant had heard them. It raised its long pointed face and stared up at the ventilation slot where Sunny and Stillwater crouched.

“I do mean it,” said Sunny. And with his heart in his mouth, he took a step forward and jumped down to the floor of the library. Keeping his back very straight, he waddled over to where the giant sat, glaring down at him with narrowed eyes.

“Get up!” hissed Sunny. “That’s Stillwater’s sofa.”

Behind him, he heard Stillwater gasp. And even though the giant was so horrendously big, Sunny felt courage fire up in his chest. _“Her_ nest. Beat it!”

Nothing. The giant just stared at him like it was stupid.

Sunny hopped up on the arm of the sofa, and the giant pushed himself back in alarm at the sudden movement. The alarm was mutual: the giant’s hand dropped to the silver hilt at his belt, and Sunny realised it was armed with a lightsaber. Still, this was no time to back down, with Stillwater watching his every move. Stillwater had plenty of admirers; Sunny wanted to be the one she didn’t scorn. “We are the porg. We are many!” he squawked.

“We are many,” echoed a dozen voices. The light of a grey morning shone through a dozen more vents that lit the library, shifting as little heads bobbed into view. Sunny almost sighed with relief.

“Off,” he said, pointing with a flipper.

“Well, aren’t you cute,” said the giant sarcastically.

Sunny’s feathers stood on end with rage and he puffed up to twice his size. “Cute? I commanded a squadron that defended our fishing grounds for four months last year. I personally slew three sharks.”

The giant fended him off with one hand. “Do you understand me?”

Sunny nodded sharply. “Yes.”

“Well that’s great, because I can’t understand you.”

The giant settled back on the sofa and brooded. After a moment he gave Sunny a sharp glance. “Can you show me a way out of here?”

Well, that would get him off the sofa, thought Sunny, glancing at the library’s upper exit. Which was inexplicably shut. The giant caught his glance. 

“Yeah, the door shut when I tried to go through it.”

Sunny shrugged and made a sympathetic noise. But it was just as well, really. If they could get that door open, and Sunny guided the giant through the ghost door beyond it, he might put Rey in danger.

It was too risky, Sunny decided. Instead he called up to Stillwater, who was watching them from the air vent. “Do what you can to bring Rey here. I can’t tell if he’s her enemy or not. Rey needs to see him.”

The giant’s eyes widened. “Did you say Rey?”

“Rey,” agreed Sunny.

“Rey, yes, I’m looking for Rey. How can I find her?”

“Why?” asked Sunny. But the giant didn’t understand, or wouldn’t tell him.

Stillwater waved a flipper. “Take care!” she said, and left.

The giant’s hands shot out with supernatural speed and Sunny found himself seized and held in the air inches from its face. Those huge hands wrapped all the way around Sunny. They could crush him. “Rey?” asked the giant again.

Sunny gulped and met the giant’s intense gaze with his own. “Rrrrrrey,” he crooned, as soothingly as he could.

After a moment the giant sighed. “Yes, Rey. I don’t expect you to understand though.” He put Sunny down by his feet, patting him on the head as he did so. Sunny took a deep breath, unsure whether he was more terrified or offended. “Run along and do whatever it is you do, fuzzball. I’ve had a long night,” said the giant. With that, he folded himself up on the sofa and closed his eyes.Sunny glared at him. This was a total defeat. “Not that sofa!” he squawked, as the giant started to relax.

The giant opened his eyes, and Sunny jabbed a flipper at the next sofa. “You can have that one!”

“Sure. Fine. If it’ll stop you staring at me while I’m trying to sleep,” the giant growled. He rolled off the best sofa and limped over to the one opposite.

Sunny took command of Stillwater’s favourite sofa. From there he could make himself into a round ball and wait with stone-like patience to see what happened when Rey came and saw what he’d caught.


	8. Droids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BB-E9 meets BB-8. They're natural enemies, of course, and Niney should know better than to listen to his stories. But he's had such a life of adventure...
> 
> \- - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a Reylo chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> \--- ---- -----

When Niney had finished spinning around in a panic, she stopped in front of the door to the library. She could hear noises from the other side: Kylo trying to cut his way out with his lightsaber. BB-E9 sat down, buzzing expectantly. Any moment now the door would succumb in a shower of sparks!

But after a while the noises stopped. Kylo couldn’t escape.

Niney made a shrill noise and attacked the door with everything she had. Cutters, lasers, circuit-slicers and vibrahacksaws. “I’m coming to get you, Master!” she screeched.

But it was no use.

Niney rocked in one place and snivelled quietly to herself. She would never be a hero.

What was she supposed to do now? Kylo’s mission was to find the girl. Niney was expected to assist him. Her programming also directed that she maintain him in “optimum mood”. But now they were separated she had no idea what Kylo’s orders might be.

Normally in such a situation, she’d return to his ship and power down, but she couldn’t even do that.

After a while, her rocking stilled. She gave a low, lost-sounding hoot. Then she turned and rolled hesitantly in the only other way she could go.

A short corridor led to an echoing hall. Niney entered, all her sensor arms extended and quiveringly alert for any more hostile doors or other traps. Lightstick held high, she rolled around examining rows of seats, a high dais in the front, and more of those carvings around the walls showing dancing golden beings of all kinds.

They sure looked happy about something.

Niney scraped at the layer of gold leaf covering them but it wasn’t thick enough to make a droid rich unless she spent all night vandalising it. Certainly not enough to buy a ship and…

And _what?_ Fly away somewhere? Strike out on her own?

 _Could_ droids buy things? Niney jittered nervously, thinking about it. Other droids who hadn’t been reprogrammed by Kylo presumably knew the answer to questions like this.

 _Did other droids ask questions like this?_ Niney gave a moan of anxiety.

On the other hand, she’d once sat next to Kylo while he watched a holodrama about a prince who was taken for ransom by a Hutt cartel. You just never knew when a bit of wealth might come in handy, she thought. She swapped tools and attacked the frieze with more energy, peeling off long strips of gold leaf and stashing them in her holocube storage.

It still wasn’t as good as, say, some secret stolen plans, though.

The dancing figures around the walls led to a big rayed disc carved behind the dais, presumably representing the Light. Niney altered it to look like a First Order symbol. She felt better immediately.

She lost interest in the Jedi temple when she noticed the temperature gradients shown by her sensors. They suggested a cold breeze was coming through one of the five doors in the opposite wall. Logic suggested that it was a way to the surface. Niney turned that way.

More corridors, more rooms, all stripped of furnishings. The place seemed deserted. Niney rolled on, guided by the drafts coming from somewhere above. Side vents sent swirls of cold air down as well, and light from a gradually brightening sky.

The way out was not obvious, but eventually a blip in Niney’s sensors told her there was a door circuit in a stretch of what looked like blank wall. She felt over the surface until she found the trigger, zapping it with her slicer mods until it sparked.

A section of wall pivoted smoothly, opening up a way out. Niney gave a burr of satisfaction and rolled through. She was in a corridor with arched windows made of rough-cut stones. Outside was a grey sky with squalls of rain. The corridor made a turn, and a wash of light beyond it suggested there was an exit. Niney rolled towards it.

Before she could reach it, she heard the whirr of gyros. She stopped dead as a shadow darkened the way to the exit. A moment later, an orange-and-white BB-8 unit rolled around the corner and screeched to a halt, buzzing and whistling. All its sensor lights flared.

There was a tense silence, broken only by the hum of two sets of sensor arms working at maximum gain as the two droids sized each other up.

“Right where my scanners said you’d be,” the BB-8 unit said at last. “How did you get here?”

“I could ask you that,” said Niney. “BB-8 unit, orange and white… So _you’re_ the droid they’re looking for.”

“Who’s looking?”

“Everyone. You’re a popular droid,” said Niney sourly.

“Who’s with you?”

“I’m…an independent operator,” said Niney, with a flash of panic. It was almost true.

“What, you flew yourself in? Liar!”

“I _could_ have done,” said Niney. “I’m an astromech droid, after all. With extra programming,” she said, and the thought made her feel brave. She raised her lightstick and twirled around. “Look, nobody here but me.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m on holiday.”

“You’re nuts, is what you are. I’m telling on you.” The BB-8 unit spun round and shot away up the corridor.

“You’re not!” Niney raced after him. She cut him off before he could escape out the exit, and they zigged and zagged along more corridors and around corners, Niney trying to strike the BB-8 unit with her zapper.

BB-8 must have missed his way, for they wound up in a dead end chamber; some little monastic cell with a gap high in one wall that let in the rainy morning air. Cornered, BB-8 shot out his laser beam. Niney countered with a dental pick and a mirror, and lines of reflected light shot around the room. BB-8 screeched and spun out of the way, still trying to slice Niney with his beam.

“Stop that!” said Niney.

 _“You_ stop, Mean Ball! You BB-E9 units are supposed to have those enhanced empathy circuits,” said BB-8. “Looks like they’re malfunctioning.”

“They are not. I’m following my loyalty programming!” said Niney. She wasn’t sure about that, but since Kylo usually attacked things, that was probably Niney’s duty too.

The two droids danced around, zapping each other with little effect.

“You’ve got the hardened durosteel shell, same as me,” said BB-8. “Waste of time zapping each other.”

“Your line was discontinued,” said Niney. “BB-8s are too independent. Nobody trusts them. What are you doing anyway, chasing after me on your own?”

“Tracking down a blip on my scanners.”

“You belong to those pathetic Resistance Jedi losers, aren’t you? How sad for you!”

“They’re not pathetic. One of them rescued me from a Teedo that wanted to sell me for parts. And the very first thing she did after that was notice one of my antennas was damaged, and she fixed it right away.”

Niney hissed derisively. “I suppose this is the famous Rey you’re talking about. She probably wanted to use you for herself.”

BB-8 growled. “She did not! She refused to sell me to a junkyard dealer. She was starving, and he was going to give her more food than she’d ever seen in her life for me. But she still wouldn’t sell me.”

“Brrrrrp! Does not compute!” said Niney.

“Well, it’s true.”

The two droids had stopped zapping each other. Now they rocked uncertainly, sizing each other up.  
There was a fair bit of wear and pitting on BB-8’s shell. He had obviously been exposed often to space dust at high speeds. A real campaigner.

“You look like you’ve been in the wars,” said Niney.

“I usually fly in X-wings. With the best pilot in the Resistance.”

“I bet my master’s better, though,” said Niney quickly, bristling. “He has this enhanced tie-fighter that…” She stopped suddenly, appalled at herself.

“Yeah? Who’s he, then?” said BB-8.

Niney froze, dimming her sensor lights. “Nobody,” she said carefully, and changed the subject. “Whoever your owner is, he let you get wrecked. You look like you’ve been through a sandblaster.”

“That was a desert. I made a long journey on my own to carry out my mission.”

Niney could believe it. The BB-8 unit did indeed look very rugged. “I suppose they don’t mind how much you suffer, so long as you get the job done,” she said.

“It wasn’t all bad. Us BB units are surprisingly well designed for planetary surface travel, as you know. No external joints.”

Niney beeped dubiously. She’d spent too much time on the Finalizer to know much about planetary surfaces. “What was it like?”

BB-8 buzzed thoughtfully. “Lots of light, lots of open air. The sand reflects the light at different wavelengths as the sun crosses the sky. The wind turns it into dunes.” He flashed her a compact set of equations in a long binary squeal: the force of the prevailing winds, the sand’s angle of repose, and the interaction between them. “Humans like to capture images of the patterns they make.”

“I see I’ve met a scholar droid,” said Niney sarcastically. Yet the equations were…attractive. And his story fascinated her. She asked, as casually as she could, “Anything else happen to you on this mission?”

The BB-8 unit rocked excitedly. “The desert was nothing compared to what happened after! First the teedo caught me. Then after Rey rescued me, we were shot at by stormtroopers. We escaped in a ship, and then we were caught by a smuggler who was hauling rathtars. The rathtars got out just as I was spotted by gangsters who wanted to capture me, and we had to escape all of them at once. Then I rolled around in a forest while Kylo Ren and his troopers tried to catch me.”

Niney quivered at the mention of her master’s name. “How did you escape?”

“Rey acted as a decoy to distract him.”

Niney beeped angrily. “Well that certainly worked!” she snarled.

“Gotcha,” said BB-8. “I _knew_ you must have come here with Kylo Ren. Where is he?”

“Catching Rey,” Niney lied. “He’s angry too, with all the trouble she’s caused. He’ll certainly slice her in pieces this time.”

BB-8 made a furious noise and skated past Niney, heading for the exit. Niney tore after him. She couldn’t allow the BB-8 unit to warn Rey and Luke. Trapped as he was in the library, he’d be at their mercy.

She managed to shoot out a grip cable and tangle it with one of BB-8’s tool arms before he made it out the door. The two droids spun around and around, getting more and more tied together, until they wound down to a halt. Both of them had their zappers and lasers raised, but bound together like this, neither of them had the advantage. Unless Niney could blind BB-8 with her laser…

As soon as she thought of it, his laser was hovering over her main camera sensor.

“Don’t you dare,” Niney said.

“Well, untie me then.”

“Never.”

A long silence. It was broken by the flap-flap-flap of little feet. Niney angled a sensor out the door. A couple of small fat creatures were waddling towards them. When they saw the droids, they stood and stared, blinking their huge eyes. A yawping, chattering conversation started up between them.

“Porgs,” said BB-8. “They’re probably friends of Rey’s. They’ll tell her and Luke that you’re here.”

Sure enough, the little grey balls trundled off, calling out as they went. More porgs came up, chattering excitedly, and had a look at the droids. Niney was sure she could make out the word “Rrrrey.”

“Does _everything_ Rey meets instantly like her?” asked Niney. “I suppose she has some Jedi mind tricks to make even those stupid things her friends, right?”

“She’s just a very good person,” said BB-8. “And she looks after her friends. She’s protected me often enough!”

“Me, me, me,” said Niney. “It’s all about _you._ I bet you don’t have any actual loyalty to your cause. You BB-8 units are infamous for it. You lot basically do what you want.” One of Niney’s empathy processors helpfully informed her that she was doing what was known as projection. _“In this case a desire to project one’s own shortcomings onto someone else in order to deny one’s failings…”_

“Well, so what? I want to help Rey.”

“It’s all one-sided, don’t you realise? You’ve decided you like her, so you run round after her like some cute pet, and she doesn’t even _understand_ you.”

“She understands binary better than anyone else I’ve ever met!” said BB-8 hotly.

“That’s impossible,” said Niney. “Only Skywalkers understand binary. Is she a Skywalker?”

“I don’t have data on that,” said BB-8.”

“Well, so she can’t really understand you. Talking to droids is a dark side thing. They all get it from Darth Vader,” said Niney triumphantly.

“Hah, really? Even my owner Poe understands me. Almost as well as Rey.”

Niney stopped, shocked. “That can’t be true!”

“See for yourself. You come and talk to Rey, and I guarantee she’ll understand you.”

Niney was overcome with curiosity. Or maybe it was loneliness. She was a droid without a mission, without Kylo to order her around.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to meet Rey. Niney could pretend to be on her side, learn about her…she could play along with whatever these Resistance people were up to. And maybe she could get to know this tough, brave BB-8 droid. Perhaps she’d learn something useful to the First Order.

“All right,” she said. “Hold still and help me untie this cable, and we’ll go see Rey together”.

A few minutes later the two droids, untangled, were rolling down a wild green landscape that was like nothing Niney had ever experienced. There were tall rocks that seemed to lean over her like a threat. She couldn’t make sense of their random shapes. The ground, too, was random. The droids were following a rough stone path, but it followed unpredictable slopes and bulges in the land. Far below, Niney could see the ocean, a wide grey expanse that faded into the misty horizon. It roared and boomed among the sharp rocks. The wind blew in spurts and starts, pushing at Niney from one side then another. It whistled among the sharp edges of the stones and hissed in the grass.

“Step!” said BB-8 cheerfully, and clanked down a sudden drop. Then another, and another.

Niney halted, trembling.

“You’ve gone down steps before, haven’t you?” asked BB-8, turning to watch her.

“Of course I have,” she said hotly. “There are plenty of steps on big warships like mine.” The Finalizer was her natural environment, after all. Though strangely, one that she felt driven to vandalise whenever possible. Remembering that made her feel uncomfortable. She should have appreciated it more…

She hopped down a step. Then another.

But there was no end to them. They went on and on, and Niney was convinced she’d lose her balance and go bounding and bouncing until she flew straight out into the air and landed on the rocks far below.

She stopped again. The wind was pushing at her, making her off balance. She was a lost droid, alone, with no purpose and nobody to command her. If she went over the edge she’d be nothing but a piece of wreckage. Nobody would care.

BB-8 hopped back up beside her. “Just take it slow. Here, let me clamp on of one of my cable grips. I won’t let you fall.”

Niney said nothing. But she let him attach a cable, and then it was much easier to hop down the steps beside him. They didn’t always stick to the path. She had to keep a sharp eye on BB-8 to see how he got around the rocks and steep slopes. He certainly was an adventurous one.

Eventually they arrived at the ship. Not the infamous Millennium Falcon, but some similar heap of Resistance junk. Its ramp was up and its hatch was shut tight. There was a huddle of porgs under it.

“I wonder what they want?” said BB-8. “Luke and Rey have been shut in there since last night, meditating or something.” He reached out one of his circuit slicers and plugged into the interface in one of the ship’s landing struts. Niney waited beside him, vibrating with anxiety.

The hatch hissed open. Moments later, a tall, slim girl was framed in the opening.

“BB-8! I didn’t expect you back already!” she said with a brilliant smile. Niney had never seen anyone smile at a droid like that before.

“But I see you’ve brought…a friend?” Rey’s voice, which was light and clear, lowered doubtfully as she looked at Niney.

“It’s a lost droid,” said BB-8. He started up the ramp. Niney quivered for a moment then followed.

Then they had to stop as a squawking, flapping mob of porgs pushed past them, chattering loudly.

“More friends,” Rey said, and laughed. “What do you lot want?” She bent down to rub the porgs’ heads as they crowded around her. But her eyes remained on Niney, who was still waiting with BB-8 near the foot of the ramp. “I guess we’re not alone on the island any more,” Rey said, her smile suddenly gone.

A bearded man joined her in the doorway, then stepped back from the porgs surging around his feet. His gaze travelled between Niney and the agitated porgs. He gave a sudden shout of laughter, his stern face transformed by a smile. “The Force doesn’t always send the messengers we expect!”

Rey boggled at him. “Are you serious?” Then she looked at the droids, waiting for her, and the porgs, who were catching at her leggings with their flipper-claws and trying to pull her down the ramp. Her smile reappeared again, quick as sunshine, and she held her hands out to welcome the droids. “Let’s see what you have to tell us,” Rey said.

The two droids were still attached with BB-8’s cable, and Niney half expected him to haul her up the ramp towards Rey. But he seemed to be waiting for Niney to make a choice.

Niney started up the ramp.


	9. The Shoe's on the Other Foot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Luke find Kylo trapped in the Jedi library. It seems they have all the power here, and Rey relishes turning the tables on Kylo. Most porgs are riveted by the argument that follows, but Sunny is worried by the change that's come over Rey. She's enjoying her victory just a bit too much. This isn't the girl Sunny knows, and Luke seems to think so too.
> 
> \- - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Kylo couldn't hate each other more right now, and for good reason. Definitely not a Reylo chapter yet.
> 
> \- - -

Sunny was startled by a soft trill from one of the porgs standing watch over the library. “She’s coming,” said a voice.

“Who?” he asked.

There was movement in one of the air vents above him as a porg popped through to look down at him. “Stillwater. She got Rey and Luke to follow her. There’s a new droid too - BB-8 found it in the upper tunnels.”

There was more movement above Sunny, slower and heavier than a porg. Rey inched into view, moving with infinite stealth. Only her face was visible, looking down through one of the small, deep-set windows. When she caught sight of the giant sleeping on the couch, her eyes narrowed. Sunny could hear her breath hiss softly between clenched teeth. She didn’t move, but the lines of her face sharpened until she looked ready to take on a shark single-handed.

Sunny looked over at the giant. The morning light filtering down from outside showed him still curled up asleep on the next couch, his boots and gauntlets laid neatly close by. They were torn from his attempt to climb the cliffs the night before. One hand trailed loosely over the edge of the sofa. He looked exhausted. The wind that had came through the vents and shifted the loose papers all morning hadn’t woken him, and the soft speech of the porgs didn’t wake him either.

He looked harmless enough, but so do most things that sleep.

Then Stillwater’s voice piped up from just above Sunny. “It’s called Kylo,” she called down softly. “The new one, I mean.”

The sound of his name was enough to wake him. Kylo stirred, opened his eyes and looked at Sunny and then up at Stillwater, perched in one of the smaller air-vents. “Still here, fuzzballs?” He unfolded himself slowly, stood up and stretched. Sunny thought he’d got used to how tall the giants were, but this one was extreme.

Kylo didn’t seem to be aware of Rey peering down at him, and indeed when Sunny looked over that way, she’d pulled back silently to where she could see without being seen. With the light behind her, she was close to invisible. Sunny suspected Luke might be watching from somewhere too, but there was no way Luke could squirm into one of the window-vents like Rey had.

Kylo walked over to the library’s exit to the upper levels. He tried the door but it still didn’t open. He felt around it with his fingers, then laid his hands on it and frowned, concentrating. The door creaked and shook, but did not move.

His movements up until now had been slow, but now he became more urgent. With sudden energy, he leapt up to grab the edge of one of the high windows opposite Rey. He tried to pull himself out, arms straining and boots scrabbling on the wall. But he couldn’t get through the gap.

Kylo dropped down and in a fury, tipped over one of the smaller shelves so all the books fell off in a noisy avalanche. Sunny squawked at the wanton vandalism, and the porgs watching from outside snapped their teeth in disapproval.

Kylo shot them all a dirty look. “What? It’s not like you lot were going to read them,” he muttered. He hauled the shelf over to another of the high windows and used it to climb up until he could shove his arms and head into the gap. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t force his shoulders through.

He dropped back to the floor again, breathing heavily. His hands clenched into fists as he looked around the library.

“I don’t suppose you know another way out?” he asked Sunny.

“How good is your swimming?” asked Sunny, edging nervously away from the angry giant.

Suddenly Rey’s cool, clear voice broke in from above.

“How do you like being _my guest?”_ she asked, with a curious emphasis on the last two words.

Kylo jumped as if somebody had dropped hot coals on him. He glared up to where Rey had reappeared in the narrow window.

“You!” he snarled, and his face changed colour.

“Rey!” Luke’s voice came from one of the other vents. It held a note of warning.

“Oh great. The gang’s all here,” said Kylo, looking up to where Luke must be. Sunny couldn’t see him either. “Come to laugh, have you?”

“Ben…” said Luke in a soft voice. “You know we wouldn’t…”

“Yeah, _I’m_ having a good laugh,” broke in Rey. “You’re trapped, aren’t you? Where’s your ship?”

“You tell me, and we’ll both know,” growled Kylo.

“The tide took it,” said Sunny. He made a wave motion with his flippers.

Rey laughed with surprise. “Oh hi, little guy. Uh. Is that your sofa? Is this your….” she looked around, frowning, “…library?” She raised her voice. “Luke, you didn’t tell me anything about this place! The porgs have a library?”

“It’s the Jedi library, Rey,” said Luke. “Ben probably parked his ship in the sea cave below. There’s a passage leading up from there to here.”

Sunny mimed a wave smashing something.

“And then the storm took it,” finished Luke.

Rey looked relieved. But then as she regarded Kylo her face became almost spiteful. “Sucks to be you,” she said.

“I didn’t realise you were such a child,” he spat back.

“Rey, stop it. No matter what he’s done, remember he wasn’t always like this. He’s my nephew. There is light in him. His mother saw it from the beginning. I’m not going to betray her faith in me or him.”

“Shut up, old man,” said Kylo loudly. “My name’s not Ben, and you know it.”

“He’s difficult to like, isn’t he?” said Sunny.

“You don’t know the half of it,” replied Rey distractedly.

“Wait, did you understand what that animal just said?” asked Kylo.

“Uh. I don’t know. Did I?” Rey looked over to Sunny.

Sunny slow clapped her. Rey blinked in surprise and opened her mouth to say something.

“Forget the porgs,” interrupted Luke from outside. “The point is, we’ve got Kylo trapped here, and he can’t do whatever he was sent to do. This our chance to get to Snoke. We need to cut the evil out at the root, and Kylo’s our key to that.”

“Thanks for revealing your cunning plan to me,” said Kylo heavily. “I couldn’t possibly have guessed it.”

“Yeah, we can skip the whole scene where you interrogate me,” said Rey, her voice diamond-hard.

Kylo blushed angrily. “I’m not telling you where Snoke is.”

“Then you can stay there. From what I remember, you don’t deal well with boredom, Ben,” observed Luke.

Kylo gestured around. “Lucky I have so many books to read.”

“In ancient languages nobody speaks any more,” said Luke. “Or did Snoke have you studying harder than you did for me?”

Kylo gave Luke a sulky look, but said nothing.

Rey laughed, and it didn’t sound like the Rey Sunny knew. Kylo’s arrival had exposed a side of her he’d never have expected. He gave her a worried glance. Her face was burning with an intensity that was almost cruel.

“Your teacher, Snoke,” she said. “I saw what you learned from _him,_ you murderer. And you offered to teach _me._ That’s so pathetic it’s almost funny!” She laughed again, but it sounded forced.

Kylo jumped up on a table under Rey’s window that put him at her eye level. “You laugh because you’re ignorant! If you knew what Snoke…”

Rey’s hand shot out, faster than a striking eel. She caught a hank of Kylo’s hair and pulled him off balance so his head hit the wall. He flailed for balance, then gripped the hand locked around his hair. With her other hand, Rey grabbed his wrist so he was trapped. “Where is Snoke?” she hissed.

“Rey! This isn’t how we…” started Luke from the other window.

“Hold my feet, Luke, so he can’t pull me in,” Rey said.

Kylo shouted something inarticulate and clutched at Rey’s wrist with his other hand while trying to back away from her. She didn’t let go. Kylo released her and reached for his lightsaber. Rey made a snarling face and locked eyes with him; Kylo’s free hand suddenly seemed to lose its strength.

“You see I’ve learned so much from you already,” she said softly.

“Rey! Be careful! You’re giving in to your anger!” Luke’s muffled voice came from outside, somewhere behind Rey.

Sunny hunkered down protectively on his sofa. This was all getting a lot more violent than he expected.

There were muttered comments from the watching porgs lining the other window vents. One of them, Old Rockhopper, appeared to be taking bets.

“It’s not a frickin’ show, you dolts!” growled Sunny.

“This is the best entertainment I’ve had in years,” said Old Rockhopper. “I haven’t seen Luke this riled up since…” He broke off as Stillwater walloped him with one flipper.

“Have some respect!” she hissed.

“Snoke. Where is he?” Rey asked. Kylo screwed his eyes shut and shook his head. Rey banged his head on the wall again. Then she took a deep breath, stilling herself. A look of intense concentration filled her face. Kylo gritted his teeth, almost panting with some effort that was not, as far as Sunny could see, physical. His free hand still hung stiffly at his side, trembling but unable to move.

Rey released him with a suddenness that had Kylo reeling off balance. Or maybe she pushed him in some way Sunny couldn’t see. He teetered a step and jumped off the table before he could fall, then sprang back up, reaching for Rey with both hands. But she’d already wriggled back out of the window. Sunny could hear her voice outside a moment later, triumphant.

“I have it. I know where Snoke is! Let’s go!”

“Rey, no! You’re not ready to face Snoke,” said Luke. “You’re full of anger and hate. If you faced him right now, you’d put yourself straight into his power!”

_“Somebody_ has to stop him. And aren’t you as mad as anyone about what he’s done to your nephew?”

“I didn’t defeat Vader with anger," said Luke slowly. He seemed to be searching for the right words. "Nor was my choice before the Emperor made out of anger.”

Kylo had been standing on the table watching them through the window. “Oh, you think you can go and give Snoke a great big hug and he'll realise the error of his ways, is that it?” he called out, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Defeat him with kindness?”

‘Let’s go, Luke,” said Rey, sounding disgusted. “Leave Kylo there. I don’t want anything more to do with him.”

“We can’t just leave him. I don’t know how or why he’s trapped in there - the library door never shut like that before. But somebody needs to keep an eye on him, and I’m not letting him starve to death.”

“He can eat his own words.”

“That’s not the Jedi way, Rey, and you know it.”

“Snoke is going to love you, Rey,” called Kylo. “Give him my regards when you see him.”

“You’re not going anywhere near Snoke until you can control your emotions better than this, Rey,” said Luke, with real anger in his voice.

Kylo laughed bitterly. “Aren’t _you_ losing your cool, Luke?”

Rey’s voice came faintly from a different window, and Sunny strained to hear. It sounded as though she was walking away. “You’re right, Luke. I see now what he does. He pushes us towards our dark side." Her voice rose to a higher pitch. "But it's just so _difficult_ to see past the cruelty in him.”

Luke said something inaudible, but Rey’s clear voice carried well enough for Sunny to hear. “Yes, I need to find my balance again. Give me time to meditate and listen to the Force. Then let’s go get Snoke.”

Sunny couldn’t hear Luke’s reply.

“They’re heading up to Luke’s hut,” Stillwater reported. “The droids are with them.”

Kylo slumped against the wall. His eyes rested on Sunny, but it was clear his thoughts were far away. The dark gaze was unnerving, and Sunny hunkered down protectively over his chosen sofa. _Stillwater’s_ sofa.

Kylo’s mouth worked. He seemed to be finding a bad taste in there, or perhaps he was thirsty. After a minute he straightened up and went to the far end of the shelves, where the library had a small alcove with a drinking fountain and a nanowave, as well as a small closet with a refresher. Sunny realised he was thirsty too, and followed.

There was one dusty cup. Kylo filled it and drank, his hands shaking slightly. Sunny sprang up to the lip of the drinking fountain, feeling with his foot for the button on its side that would turn it on.

“Here, fuzzball,” said Kylo, pressing the button. He watched Sunny drink. The next thing Sunny knew, a long finger was rubbing the feathers on the back of his neck. He started, bracing himself for the violence that this giant was undoubtedly capable of. But Kylo did nothing more than soothe Sunny’s neck feathers, and Sunny settled at the calming sensation.

It seemed to calm Kylo too, or at any rate, his hands had stopped shaking.

“That’s my itchy spot,” said Sunny approvingly.

“Lucky you’re too cute to eat,” said Kylo, and rubbed Sunny’s belly. “Almost.”

Sunny bit him instantly.

Kylo jumped back, sucking his fingers. “You little beast! You understand every word, don’t you?”

Sunny puffed his feathers warningly, jumped off the water fountain and walked back to his sofa.

“You know I could smack you into orbit, but what would be the point?” said Kylo, sitting beside him.

“It would be a cheap victory,” said Sunny, hoping he sounded braver than he felt. Close up, Kylo was terrifyingly large. One of the porgs above them gave a whimper of alarm.

Kylo squinted at him. “It feels like I can almost understand you.”

“Use the Force,” said Sunny, in a credible imitation of Luke’s voice. It was a phrase he’d heard a lot lately during Rey's training sessions.

Kylo’s squint broke into a wholly unexpected smile, a lopsided, fleeting thing. “Doofus creature.” He shook his head and lapsed into his former brooding self.

They were distracted by sounds coming from the corridor that led to the sea cave. Something was approaching the half-closed door, walking unsteadily. A minute later, Strike appeared, labouring under the weight of an enormous fish.

“You going to guard that sofa until the breeding season?” he said, ignoring Kylo. “I thought you might need something to eat.”

Sunny patted his tummy. “No, I’m still full. Stillwater and I caught the elver run last night. They were practically jumping down our throats.”

“Oh, I heard it was good out on the windward side,” said Strike. He canted his head to look up at Kylo. “What about him then? Are you two rivals for that couch?”

Kylo gave Strike a salute which Sunny felt nearly certain was ironic. He shrugged. “That’s Kylo. He’s Luke and Rey’s enemy. You missed a real shouting match. Sure beat any of our nesting site squabbles for drama.”

Stillwater spoke from where she sat, a plump grey lump blocking one of the windows. “I note that he has acted respectfully towards your claim on our sofa.”

Sunny’s heart leaped, but he kept his voice casual. “So now it’s _our_ sofa, is it?”

Stillwater clapped her wings and sketched the steps of a war dance. “I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.”

Sunny threw back his head, gave a happy squawk, and danced the answering steps to Stillwater’s. “Hear that?” he crowed, looking at Strike and Kylo.

Strike grinned. “The only surprise is what took you two so bloody long,” he said. He craned his neck up at Kylo, who was looking between the porgs with bemusement. “Here, giant. Kylo. Share this fish as a good-luck gift.” He took a small ritual bite out of it then offered it to Kylo, hefting it above his head to do so. “Go on. It’s traditional, when you witness a nesting pledge.”

Kylo bent down and took it. “Uh. Thanks.” He held it up by the tail. It was a huge fish, really enough for many mouthfuls, even for a giant like him. “I’m glad everyone on this island isn’t a complete arsehole.”

Strike looked smug. “Of course I wouldn’t take half of it. Look at the size of you.”

“I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about, Strike,” said Stillwater.

“Rey tricked him somehow,” explained Sunny. “She got him in her grip and stole one of his secrets. He’s angry about it.”

Kylo stood up suddenly. “I think I understood that,” he said sourly. “I’ll just leave you to discuss my failures.” He took the fish to the kitchen alcove, gutted it efficiently with a knife he pulled from his belt, and dropped it in the nanowarmer.

The meal seemed to give him heart. “Third time lucky,” he told the porgs. “Rey won’t take me by surprise again.”


	10. Somebody's Always Leaving

Why did humans meditate so frequently? In this, Niney’s new companions were no different to her master. Kylo liked to meditate in a bare, austere room with poor lighting. Luke and Rey meditated in a primitive, austere stone hut with poor lighting. Here they were, seated opposite each other in silence.

Niney supposed they needed to power down and recharge from their exhausting lives, poor things. Rey seemed to be getting there. Her face had smoothed out and her hands lay lax and open on her lap.

Luke’s meditation didn’t seem to be going so well. There was a frown creasing his forehead and every now and then he opened his eyes and looked around as though taking an inventory of everything in the hut.

BB-8 had offered Niney a hit off Luke’s solar power cells when they came in, and Niney was feeling pretty chipper, herself.

It helped that the wind had dropped and the sun had come out. Niney stood in the doorway to Luke’s hut, rocking gently while BB-8 told her about Ahch-To. She could see brilliant green grass, stone huts and paths worn by use and weather, and the sea, now innocently flat and blue. Somehow it was larger than all the vast expanses of space she’d travelled.

The conversation turned to droids BB-8 had known. BB units were valued for their resourcefulness and pluck, he said. Every one of them a potential hero.

“Really?” asked Niney. “I got the impression we just annoy everyone.”

“That might be just you,” said BB-8 tartly, then softened the remark by adding, “Expressing your independence.”

Luke spoke up from inside the hut. “BB-8, go monitor the comms mast and give us some peace and quiet here.”

BB-8 rolled off obediently up the hill, leaving Niney to contemplate her independence and potential heroism.

“Rey, I need to set the fish traps or we won’t have much dinner tonight,” said Luke. “Stay here. You’re doing well, but I want you to go beyond being in touch with the Force. I want you to try and form something with it. A shield, a wall around your emotions, made of light. Can you do that for me?”

Rey seemed to reply from a long way away. “Yes,” she said faintly.

Luke stood up. Taking a worn leather bag down from a hook, he quickly stuffed a few things into it, shrugged into his cloak and strode past Niney and out of sight. She wondered why he’d taken his lightsaber.

Niney swivelled one camera back to look at Rey. She seemed completely blissed out in a way that Kylo never managed when he meditated. Niney stifled a quiet trill of amusement, wondering what would happen if she zapped Rey mid-trance. Not a question she’d ever needed to ask herself about Kylo: she knew she couldn’t roll fast enough to avoid his wrath. Niney’s zapper was already extended curiously towards Rey, but then she thought better of it.

These people were very nice and all, but Niney’s native environment was a spaceship - of which there was one parked, unguarded, down by the water. An XS stock light freighter, to be precise. Not a ship she knew well - like so many Resistance craft, it was a battered old thing dating from long before her time - but she’d spotted the reassuring bulge of laser cannon turrets on top. All she had to do was to overcome her fear of steps and she could commandeer it. Once she had the ramp up and the hatch locked tight, there wasn’t much anyone could do to her.

Kylo needed such a ship. Sure, Niney hadn’t worked out how to get him out of the library, but that might occur to her later. Maybe he’d break out by himself. If not, the XS could have the firepower to blast a hole in the side of the hill he was trapped under.

The trouble with most droids was that they wouldn’t do anything until they’d calculated all the possibilities. Not Niney.

She rolled out cautiously and started down the path. A couple of porgs materialised out of the rocks, but they merely squawked politely before sinking back out of sight. They were uncannily well camouflaged.

This time Niney used her cable-grips to help her ease down the steps slowly and almost silently until she was away from where Rey might hear her departure. By the time she’d managed that, she’d quite lost her fear of steps.

She was tempted to go off the trail and try to talk to Kylo. But she’d been looking into the library as he argued with Rey and Luke, and seen how the porgs stood watch over him. It was difficult to tell whose side they were on, or what they might be capable of. Porgs were everywhere on the island; they commented on everything. They would almost certainly alert Luke or Rey if Niney approached Kylo.

The path skirted the foot of a tall weathered bluff. Niney was sure she would see the ship once she rounded the end of it. But before she could reach it, Niney heard footsteps coming down the path. Rey had noticed her absence after all!

There was nowhere to go. The path here was narrow, almost hugging a cliff. Desperately, Niney forced herself to hurry until she was almost hopping from step to step.

A moment later, Rey appeared on the path behind her, running so fast she was leaning into the cliff around the turns. She would be on Niney in no time. But to Niney’s surprise, Rey passed her like a comet in one flying leap, paying her no attention at all.

Then Niney’s sensors picked up the familiar whine of a sublight engine warming up. Rey was already out of sight around the bluff and Niney tried to put on even more speed to follow her. As she turned the corner, she almost lost control and teetered horribly on the edge of the cliff. She lashed out her cable grips and heaved herself away from the edge, pulling herself around to the final stretch.

There was the ship, all right. The blue glow of its exhaust flared and it rose smoothly, hanging above the shore for a moment before kicking off into the sky. Soon it was just a shrinking dot, until with a flash it was gone.

Niney stood juddering on the spot. She didn’t know what to do. Had Kylo escaped somehow? He’d gone without her! Forgotten her without a moment’s thought. She should be glad of his escape, but instead she was furious. She did an angry spin on the spot, aware of the drop below her but too angry to care much. She could just twirl right off that edge and smash on the rocks below, and who would even notice?

Niney ground to a halt and started to whimper. Of course Kylo couldn’t rescue a droid when he didn’t even know where she was. Especially since she was with his enemies.

Her mission was uncompleted, its outcome unresolved, and she didn’t belong to anybody any more. The thought of changing owners and reversing her beliefs seemed humiliating, not to mention exhausting.

And here came Niney’s potential new owner now, storming back up the path towards Niney. Every trace of her former meditative peace gone. She wasn’t swearing, but her face was set in lines of stone and everything from her cocked elbows to her stomping stride spoke of barely-contained rage. In that moment, she didn’t look too different from Niney’s previous owner. Right down to the same vulnerable look around the eyes.

“It seems Kylo Ren has escaped after all,” said Niney with careful neutrality. Rey looked angry enough to kick her off the path and out to sea, and Niney was suddenly less keen to experience that.

“Kylo…Kylo what?” The girl jerked to a halt and looked down at Niney. Then she pointed one shaking finger up at the sky. “That was _Luke!”_


	11. Kylo Can't Swim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reylo-free chapter, for those of you who are just here for the porgs.
> 
> \- - -

Kylo made another attempt to leave via the sea-cave. The tide had gone out again, and Kylo could walk out halfway towards the cave entrance. Sunny and Strike watched as he stripped off his layers and layers of black clothing and laid them on a rock. Boots, gauntlets, cloak, tunic, undershirt, pants, all dropped into a neat pile until Kylo looked like some pale sea creature.

“No scales, though,” said Sunny. “I have wondered.”

“Well of course not,” said Strike smugly. “Giants don’t have scales.”

“Just how much of Luke have you seen, lurking outside his hut all the time?” asked Sunny.

“All of him. It’s a good thing they cover up, if you ask me.”

Sunny looked over at Kylo, now knee deep in the sea, and agreed. It made him a bit queasy, being able to see all those muscles and tendons so exposed in bulges and cords everywhere. Like he’d been flayed. “Too much anatomy,” said Sunny.

A sea creature Kylo was not. Sunny and Strike swam lazily around him as he waded towards the cave entrance. The waves knocked him off balance, and soon he was in over his head. Those long legs had a powerful kick, and his arms moved in strong, jerky circles. But none of it did much to keep him afloat. Without a porg’s layers of fat, Kylo had the buoyancy of a bag of rocks. He was a worse swimmer even than Luke.

The only one of them that could swim at all was Rey, and it was only because she’d nearly drowned the first time she went in the water. Sunny had seen her down on the beach a few days after she arrived. The sea obviously fascinated her. She put in a toe, then hopped and skipped away from the incoming waves, laughing like a squeaky little chick on its first outing. Then she waded out to her knees. After a while she lay down in the water, letting the waves roll her around until she was laughing and spluttering in amazement.

Then a big wave took her and dragged her out, and her laughter turned to cries of terror. Sunny and the other porgs had swarmed around her, but she was too big for them to help much, though they shoved her towards the shore as much as they could.

Once she got clear of the water, and after she’d finished coughing her lungs out, she’d looked back at the sea with the face of somebody who’d been betrayed. From then on, she’d come marching down to the beach most days to get in the water, starting with the most sheltered rock pools and slowly working up to shallow coves. Finally she could flounder around in the open sea with her head mostly above water. She didn’t appear to like the sea, but Sunny appreciated that she wouldn’t let it beat her.

Kylo might have reached that point one day too, but right now he was being slapped around the rocks at the mouth of the cave by waves that sucked in and out with concentrated force. Everything was slick and slimy, and he couldn’t get a grip on anything. Sunny and Strike circled him, unwilling to go anywhere near those grasping hands. With all his weight, he’d drag them down.

“I hate to see him go like this. I was enjoying the drama,” said Strike. “He was a worthy opponent, I thought. I wanted to see what Rey and Luke would do.”

“Drowning’s a dishonourable death for anyone. But we can’t help him on our own.” Sunny narrowly evaded Kylo’s outstretched fingers for the third time.

The sea washed them out of the cave, and for a moment they were in the light. The water around them was a deep, fathomless green. Grey cliffs rose far above them to either side, bearded up to the high tide line with seaweed. They were also starred with beautiful sea-flowers and intertidal growths of a dozen bright colours, if one cared to look. Kylo was in no position to appreciate them. He was scrabbling for purchase on any hint of a ledge that he could reach. His fingers slipped on the slimy rocks and the waves pulled him away with careless ease.

Just then Sunny spotted something floating in the water not far away. “Strike! Look! Maybe that will help.”

They swam over and found a piece of floating junk. Something unnatural.

“Probably something from inside Kylo’s wrecked ship,” said Strike. “A seat cushion, maybe?” They pushed it over to where Kylo was gasping and flailing by the cave entrance. His eyes were black with desperation.

Kylo grabbed the piece of flotsam and it promptly sank below the surface, taking Kylo with it. A moment later he surfaced again, hugging it to his chest. The cushion was enough to keep his face above the water if he thrashed his legs, but there was no way he was going to travel any distance.

Another big wave washed him back into the cave, and he didn’t fight it.

“You take one elbow, I’ll take the other,” said Sunny. “If he keeps still, we might be able to land him.”

Slowly they piloted Kylo back in towards the cave beach. As soon as he felt the bottom under his feet again, he stood up and waded quickly back to dry land. Then he stood, arms folded for warmth, looking back out of the cave entrance.

“That’s the only other way out?” he asked the porgs. They nodded. He pulled a face. “Thanks for pulling me back in. If I ever, uh, have a fish or something, I’ll definitely share it with you.”

“Thanks,” said Strike.

“You’re easily won over,” said Sunny. “He’s Rey’s enemy, remember?”

“Rey’s also generous with her fish,” said Strike. “So you’re right. They both have something to recommend them. It is a bit of a tricky choice.”

“Somehow I doubt their dispute is about fish,” said Sunny.

“I know. I doubt they’ve argued about nesting sites either,” said Strike. “Wouldn’t you love to know why they hate each other?”

“Of course!” said Sunny.

Kylo dried himself off with his cloak and got dressed again. The porgs marched after him, back to the library. Everyone took a couch to themselves.

Sunny stared at Strike. “Who are you hoping to share that couch with?”

“None of your business.”

“Ooooooh, touchy.”

Just then they all heard a sound that had become familiar lately. A ship’s engine. Kylo bounded to his feet in an instant. He jumped onto the nearest table so he could see out the window. The light from outside flickered as something flew overhead. Kylo beat his fist against his thigh. “Kark it! They’re leaving!” He jumped off the table and ran over to the library door. The door thudded hollowly as he threw his weight against it, again and again, but it did not move. “I’ve got to get out of here!”

Stillwater shuffled in through another window and peered down at them. “Did you see that? Uke’s gone. He took the starship and left Rey behind. I guess that makes Kylo our problem now.”

“”Yeah, it would be really bad luck to have him starve to death in here,” said Sunny. “And I don’t think Rey’s going to be much help.”

The porgs stared at Kylo, and he stared gloomily back.

A metallic scraping interrupted their thoughts. It was the other droid. She couldn’t fit through any of the windows, but she leaned in far enough to see them. Kylo got up to take a closer look, and she chittered at him for a while. When she finished, he gave a sardonic laugh.

“What?” asked Sunny.

Kylo glanced down at him. Sunny’s questioning tone was obvious enough, and he answered. “Luke’s flown off without Rey.”

“I know. But it’s not funny!” Sunny pulled a face that Kylo seemed to interpret.

Kylo gave Sunny a challenging glare back.  _“Of course_ I'm amused. I’m her enemy, after all. There’s nothing Rey hates more than being abandoned.”

“Apart from you,” said Sunny, pointing a flipper-wing at him. “She sure hates you a lot.”

Kylo gave a rather bitter laugh but didn’t answer. He reached up and tapped the droid leaning through the window gently on her dome. “Good try, Niney. Most droids wouldn’t have thought of taking a ship. It’s just a shame Luke got there first.”

The Niney gave a pleased-sounding buzz. Kylo brushed some fragments of dirt and grass off her shell, and she hummed.

“Help me with these books, then,” said Kylo. “If I’m stuck in the famous Jedi Library, I might as well learn something.”


	12. From a Certain Point of View

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and Rey fight for the moral high ground. Turns out it's more difficult than either of them expect. It's all good entertainment for the porgs
> 
> \- - -

“What are you doing there, Niney?” asked Rey’s voice sharply from outside. Niney gave a guilty start and Kylo frowned. A moment later Rey looked in. The two stared at each other tensely.

“Still here, I see. Been swimming, have you?” said Rey, seeing Kylo’s hair, which hung down in heavy damp rat’s tails. “But not well enough to escape.”

“How good’s _your_ swimming, sand rat?”

“It’s really good,” said Rey.

Sunny gave a snort, and Rey had the grace to look abashed. “Good enough,” she amended.

“Where was Luke off to?” asked Kylo. “Going to take down Snoke on his own, is he?”

Rey said nothing, but her eyes flashed and the air in the library seemed to solidify for a moment. Papers shifted and datacubes rattled on their shelves, shaken by some force Sunny could not see.

“I thought so,” said Kylo quietly. “I suppose he wants to martyr himself.”

“Why?” Rey burst out. “He’s saved the galaxy enough times already.”

“And you think it’s your turn now?” Kylo seemed both amused and sad at the thought. “Funny, people used to say about me. Apparently _I_ was going to save the galaxy.”

“Before you became a murderer!” spat Rey.

Kylo’s smile became even bleaker. _“And_ after.”

Rey boggled at him.

“Different people though,” Kylo continued. “The First Order believes the galaxy needs what only they can offer, and I'm part of that.”

“You think Snoke and the First Order care about the rest of the galaxy?” Rey sounded outraged.

Kylo merely nodded.

Rey looked like he’d slapped her. “But the _evil_ they do!” she burst out.

“Like the slavery that goes on?” asked Kylo sardonically, and his smile became an edged weapon. “The power that the crime bosses have in half the systems in the New Republic? The miserable life you led on Jakku? That’s because there’s next to no government in those places, Rey. A strong leader would root out all those injustices. Not just sit around in a Senate discussing them.”

Rey blew out a long breath of frustration. She looked like a young porg discovering that the ice floe it’s resting on is not as stable as it imagined. Finally she growled, “The way the First Order does things is _wrong,_ Kylo. It doesn’t matter what their goals are, if they have to hurt so many people to win! Stealing children to make their stormtroopers! Blowing up whole planets! Do you really think they’re going to bring an age of peace and justice if they get in power?”

“Sometimes things are necessary…” muttered Kylo, and now his smile was quite gone. “For what it’s worth, I thought the attack on the Hosnian system was a mistake.”

“A _mistake,”_ Rey echoed, making his words sound pompous and cruel.

“All right. Hux was wrong. More than wrong. Evil. He’s ruthless, I admit that. But he’s the First Order’s _military_ leader. Hux won’t be in charge when the war is over. Snoke is the Supreme Leader.” Kylo was talking fast, almost gabbling, and when he looked up at Rey he seemed almost afraid.

“Sounds like he’s repeating a lesson he’s learned,” said Stillwater, looking between the two of them.

“Rey’s not buying it,” said Sunny. “I don’t think he believes it himself.”

“Well, I’m done talking,” said Kylo after a pause. “We’re never going to agree.” He got down off the table and walked over to the bookshelves to pick up the large volume lying on the desk. “You were going to leave me alone and let me starve to death, remember?”

“That’s not the Jedi way,” said Rey woodenly. Then she sniffed. “I smell fish. Cooked fish. _Porgs?”_

Strike froze into a rock-like lump on his sofa. Sunny suddenly found he had to preen under one wing. Rey looked across sharply to Stillwater’s window ledge. Stillwater blinked slowly and whistled an idle tune. Ignoring them all, Kylo picked up a discarded feather and picked his teeth with it.

“Why would you help _him,_ porgs?” Rey burst out. “He’s a monster! He killed his own father!”

Kylo kept his face down towards his book. His normally mobile face was frozen, though it seemed to cost him an effort to keep it that way. Strike shuffled uncomfortably, looking at Kylo askance.

“It’s like something from an old saga,” murmured Stillwater from her perch. “Thorporg slew his father.”

“Nice. I’m sitting next to a giant Thorporg,” said Sunny.

“He had good reason,” chipped in Strike. “Thorporg’s father would have led their clan to ruin.”

“Well, they could have maybe _talked_ about that before turning to murder!” said Sunny.

“They probably did, but their arguments about fisheries management would make for a boring saga. The story just cuts straight to the juicy bit,” said Stillwater.

Rey gave a ‘humph’ of disgust and left. Stillwater shuffled around to look out after her. “Looks like Rey’s going up to Luke’s hut. She’ll probably sleep there now Luke’s taken the ship.”

“I miss following Rey around,” said Sunny.

“You can have my spot outside Luke’s hut if you like,” said Strike. “I’ll mind your sofa for you.”

“Piss off, Strike.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Strike, you’re my friend and all, but even you have to admit you’re pretty shady sometimes.”

Stillwater settled the argument by jumping down from the window and onto the contested sofa herself. She turned around a few times and fluffed up her feathers comfortably. “Definitely the best one.”

“Isn’t it?” said Sunny happily, and leaned against her.

Stillwater leaned back for a moment, then said, “Go watch Rey. I know you want to.”

Kylo turned his chair around so the droid wedged in the window above him could see the book in his lap. She stretched out a camera arm and read over his shoulder. They started a conversation that seemed to be about philosophy. The droid was translating the book, and Kylo was discussing it with her.

“Sounds like Luke on a good day,” said Strike.

“What, he talked to you about philosophy?” asked Stillwater enviously.

“No, but he liked to pick up religious programmes on the holonet and argue with the screen. He’d get quite shouty.”

“Kylo’s a shark, but at least we might learn something about the Force from him,” said Stillwater. “I’ve always been curious. Why is this island so special to the Jedi?”

“I’m more interested in Rey,” said Sunny. He climbed up on the back of the sofa and measured the distance up to the nearest window, tensing the powerful muscles hidden in his haunches. He jumped, but missed, bouncing and rolling past Kylo’s feet.

“I’m not laughing,” said Stillwater, who clearly was.

“Damn, I can’t get out that way. I’ll have to go down to the sea cave and swim all the way round to the landing,” said Sunny, picking himself up with a shake of his feathers.

Without a word, Kylo put his book down. His big hands went right around Sunny’s middle. He stood and lifted Sunny up to deposit him in the nearest window. Sunny balanced on the sill and turned to look back down at him, but Kylo had already seated himself between Strike and Stillwater. His head was bent down to his book.

“Bit boring for a murderer,” commented Stillwater. Sunny still hesitated, so she said, “Go on. You know I can look after myself.”

Sunny went off to look for Rey.


	13. Something's Coming

The next few days were quiet. Niney divided her time between keeping Kylo company and following BB-8 around. He showed her how to cannonball down the island’s greenways, and the porgs learned to avoid them as they came shrilling and shrieking down the steep grassy lanes, barely under control.

Rey seemed dejected except when she practiced her lightsaber drill, which she did with renewed fury. Her favourite porg tried to cheer her up by attacking her with sticks. It seemed to work. Niney watched her levitate the porg, sweeping her lightsaber under him. Released to the ground, he bounced up and down and squawked with excitement. It brought a smile to Rey’s face.

Niney stole food for Kylo. Rey caught her doing it, and went to pull the packet of carbo bars from Niney’s claws. Niney whirred threateningly, extending one of her zapper arms.

“You’re just following your programming, I guess,” Rey muttered, and let her go. Niney stretched out a claw and gave Rey a light tap on the knee, almost a pat.  
\- - -  
Kylo had finished his fish meal after a day spent the day pacing and reading. Niney watched from above. The porgs were killing time with a call-and-response song, making an endless pattern of soft chirps and trills passed between the one inside - Niney thought it was the female - and those outside. It had a soothing effect. The sinking sun sent bars of light through the narrow windows, filling the library with rose-coloured light.Kylo looked sleepy and Niney was considering powering herself down for a while.

Then Kylo started up suddenly from his seat on the sofa, making the porgs break off their song mid-note.

“What is it?” asked Niney. Leaning further in the window, she could see Kylo patting the cushions around him before unclipping his lightsaber and holding it up to his face. His eyes narrowed to black slits as he inspected the hilt.

“I felt something move. I thought one of the porgs had got up on the sofa with me, but it’s the lightsaber,” he said.

The porg on the next sofa gave a “wasn’t me,” shrug.

“Is it doing that twitchy thing again?” asked Niney. She extruded a multi-frequency scanner and stretched it into the library. There was an energy signature that hadn’t been there a minute ago, and it was centred on where Kylo was holding his lightsaber. She burbled uneasily and said to Kylo. “I haven’t felt that in a while.”

He nodded, and his eyes darkened as a thought struck him. “In fact…it hasn’t done it since we arrived here. Usually the kyber crystal plays up when the Supreme Leader’s thinking about me, or planning something…” His face became still at the implications.

“Well, maybe you’re not as important to him as you thought,” said Niney tartly.

Kylo glared at Niney. “That’s not the point. The kyber crystal’s been dead to Snoke since I got here. It’s like there’s some barrier between us and the rest of the galaxy.” He held the lightsaber close, looking into the guard vents. They gave off a fitful reddish glow that turned his eyes red and made his nose into a great predatory beak. "But now..."

“Careful. If the crystal really flares up that’ll have your eye out,” said Niney.

“Snoke must be close,” muttered Kylo.

“Oh, joy,” said Niney. She’d been a witness to how Snoke punished his apprentice more than once, and when Snoke caught up with them, Niney was sure she’d have to witness it again. Even lacking the nerves of an organic being, Niney understood how painful Snoke’s attacks were. They were not all physical, either. Niney’s empathy circuits recognised the sequence of moves Snoke used to reveal Kylo’s emotional vulnerabilities. With surgical precision, Snoke lured Kylo into lowering his defences so his jabs would strike all the deeper. Snoke aimed his words with diabolical precision, reducing Kylo to such a puddle of despair and self-loathing that he almost welcomed the physical pain that followed.

After seeing it the first time, Niney had kept all her sensors pulled in during Snoke’s interviews with Kylo. She’d spin slowly in place on the hard floor of Snoke’s throne-room, trying to block out Kylo’s distress. She distracted herself by thinking about technical problems, and imagined rewiring Snoke’s throne so the holotransmitter built into it would electrocute him. It would be difficult, but not impossible. And of course, utterly contrary to her programming.

It became a forbidden fantasy she couldn’t extinguish. Niney’s processors returned to it repeatedly in her idle moments. There was no way Snoke could dig these traitorous thoughts out of her non-organic mind as he could Kylo’s, yet she lived in terror that she would blurt out this secret desire at the worst possible moment.

Now in the Jedi Library, the female porg asked Kylo something; with so many languages imprinted in her circuits, Niney was beginning to pick up some of the meanings in the porg language too. The porg had said something like, “Who is Snoke and why is he looking for Rey?” Niney’s circuits steamed as she suppressed the thought of a thousand hearty porgs feasting on Snoke’s barbecued body. Kylo barely glanced at the porg, though.

“What about Luke?” Niney asked. “Wasn’t he going to fight Snoke?”

Kylo gave a soft ‘hah’ of breath, as though he’d been hit in the stomach. “Yes. The old man confronted him and lost, of course. Snoke will have forced the location of Ahch-To out of him.” Kylo didn’t seem very happy about it.

The thought didn’t give Niney much pleasure either. Her mind returned stubbornly to its visions of Snoke fried to a crisp on his throne. Niney _had_ to distract herself from these fearsome imaginings. “If Snoke’s here then he can catch Rey himself,” she said, forcing her binary tones into a bright, careless-sounding twitter. “We should be thinking how to make sure you get the credit for finding her in the first place.”

But her attempt at good cheer misfired.

“Do you even _have_ empathy circuits?” asked Kylo hotly.

“Do _you?”_ said Niney. She was stung by his tone and confused by his words. “Don’t you want her caught? Our mission was to find this girl and take her to Snoke.”

“Forget the mission, Whiny,” said Kylo bitterly. “Go tell Rey Snoke’s on his way here. That he may be here already. She needs to hide.”

“What? _Warn_ Rey?” Niney couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t really wanted to see Rey tortured in Kylo’s place; the girl’s kindness and respect for droids made Niney’s innermost circuits glow. Given the choice, Niney would prefer to protect Rey. But for Kylo to share her secret feelings was inconceivable. Distressed by the suddenness of this reversal, Niney jerked herself out of the window and spun around and around on the grass outside, for a minute trying to get her confusion under control.

Once she’d calmed herself, she rolled back in to where she could see Kylo. “Do we have a _new_ mission?” she asked hopefully.

“Just go and warn her! Then, I don’t know. Help her. Or come back here and tell me what’s happening. You’re a resourceful droid, you’ll figure it out!”

Niney pulled herself out of the hole in the hillside and started up the rough slope towards Rey’s hut. All around her the porgs were chattering, passing word from one to another. Niney could make out the name “Snoke”. But even if the alarm reached Rey before Niney could get there, only Niney could explain Kylo’s warning.

Niney found she liked this new mission very much. Its urgency and importance lent her extra speed.

And Kylo had called her a “resourceful droid!” He trusted her to “figure it out!” Fired up by his praise, Niney put on her best speed towards Rey. She could see her down below by the fish traps.

\- - - -


	14. Snoke Arrives

The porgs were hanging out around Rey’s fish traps, encouraging a few more bluies to swim in. Strike pulled aside one of the fattest fish before it could go in the net. “I’ll take this one to Kylo,” he said, radiating smugness. “He’s looking after my spot in the library for me.”

“Did he tell you that, did he?” said Sunny skeptically. “Is that why you’re on his side?”

“Well, he’s powerful, too,” said Strike. “People take me seriously now. ‘There goes Strike,’ they say. ‘He’s friends with a giant warlord.’ I get respect.”

“He doesn’t look very powerful to me. He spends all his time reading books, and Rey beat him that time we saw them fight.”

“And another time before that,” said Storm, popping up in the water nearby. “Before they got to Ahch-To.” She surged above the surface and clapped her flippers to scare more fish into the trap. The fish crashed into each other trying to enter it. “Gods, bluies are stupid.”

“I’m learning a lot, listening to Kylo talk with that translator droid,” said Strike. “And don’t underestimate his power. _Rey_ doesn’t. You could tell Uke was scared of Kylo too.”

Rey appeared along the shoreline track, followed by BB-8. She smiled at the porgs bobbing in the waves next to her trap. “Thanks. You’re a big help!”

They moved aside to let her drag the trap onto land, then hopped out after it. Storm flicked water at BB-8. He squealed and shot out a zapper sparkling with blue light.

“Droids and water don’t mix. Leave BB-8 alone, please,” said Rey. BB-8 buzzed angrily, and Rey translated. “He says to tell you that porgs and electricity don’t mix either.”

Storm backed away. Rey pulled on a pair of gauntlets and took out the bluies one by one. They had sharp fins, and thrashed around vigorously. Sunny killed them with an expert bite to their primary nerve clusters and Rey gutted them, wincing. “Everything on Jakku was…drier than this. Even their insides!”

Strike held out his fish to be gutted.

“That’s a big one,” Rey said.

“It’s for Kylo,” Strike said, after she’d finished. Rey squinted at him, perhaps wondering whether she’d understood. Strike waved a flipper and started hauling the fish back into the water so he could tow it back to the Jedi Library’s sea-cave entrance.

“Obsequious tit,” said Sunny.

Suddenly they heard the scream of overstretched gyros, and a moment later Kylo’s droid came shooting down one of the greenways at top speed. As Niney approached, they could hear her rapidfire binary speech. Rey slapped her fish angrily on a rock. “It’s yours, porgs,” she muttered, dropping it. The next moment she was jumping up to the top of the nearest headland in a series of those astonishing leaps her training allowed her.

“What do you think that was about?” Sunny asked.

“Snoke’s coming!”

The news came in a wave, called from mouth to mouth from the porgs eavesdropping around the Jedi Library until it reached the shore where Sunny and his friends stood, wondering at Rey’s sudden departure. Sunny, Strike and Storm started to follow her as fast as they could, but she was running and they couldn’t keep up. A gaggle of interested porgs trailed after them, their tongues wagging, alive with curiosity.

By the time Sunny and his friends got to Luke’s hut, Rey had collected her staff and lightsaber and was hastily stowing an assortment of knives and tools in her pockets and on her belt loops.

“This, this, this, I might need this — Hi porgs! And this could come in handy…oh, and food.” She stashed a few carbo bars in her pockets. “Best be prepared for anything.”

The world outside the hut suddenly flashed with brightness and there was a great ‘whoom’ of sound. Rey ran out, Sunny hopping after her. A starship had appeared above them. It fired its cannons directly down onto the comms mast at the top of the hill with a ‘whump’ that shook the ground. Then it dropped into the cloud of smoke and dust it had created.

Rey stood before the doorway of the hut, taking deep lungfuls of air. Her eyes were shut and the calmness of her face made a strange contrast with the violence of the ship’s arrival. Then her eyes snapped open as though she’d received some signal.

“So that’s Snoke,” she said, her mouth twisting with disgust. She patted Sunny on the head. “Run, little one.”

Shouldering her staff, she started resolutely up the hill.

The porgs looked at each other, then followed her in a mass.

This new starcraft was something different. It perched elegantly in the crater it had made, all black vicious curves like a skeletal bird of prey. A wreath of steam and smoke surrounded it.

A hatch opened with a hiss and a ramp extended like a long tongue. A tall figure stood framed in darkness in the doorway. The light of the setting sun glinted on his resplendent golden robe.

“Superb plumage,” commented Strike, who’d reached the top first.

“Strike!” said Sunny reprovingly.

Rey strode up until she was maybe ten metres away from the ship’s landing ramp. There she stopped, unslinging her staff and holding her lightsaber in her other hand. But she didn’t ignite it. Although she stood in her characteristic training stance, shoulders squared and head slightly lowered, Sunny noticed that she didn’t seem as sure of herself as usual.

The newcomer descended from the open hatchway, placing his gold-slippered feet with a certain delicacy that spoke of aristocracy. As he moved closer, Sunny could see that his face was riven by scars. Some of them looked recent; a raw red mark across his exposed collarbones suggested he’d seen combat lately.

“All giants are tall,” muttered Storm. “But…”

“I know,” said Sunny. “Each one’s been taller than the last, but this one is just ridiculous.”

Snoke had reached the foot of the ramp, and the difference in height between him and Rey was obvious. She stood, tense and somehow lacking her usual easy balance, though her face showed nothing other than a kind of determined serenity.

“And what’s wrong with his head?” asked Storm.

“Battle scars. No doubt he is a great warrior and gained those marks in combat,” said Strike. “He wears them with pride, I see.”

Sunny groaned. “Gods, Strike, you’re such a toady sometimes.”

Warrior or not, Snoke did not appear to carry any weapons, and he spread his arms wide to emphasise this. His misshapen face broke into smile as he looked around, taking in Rey, the island with its little stone huts, the wide sea, and the chorus line of sarcastic porgs.

“Ah Rey. I am so glad to meet you. What a lovely eyrie you have chosen in which to make your nest.”

“Very well-spoken, isn’t he?” murmured Strike.

Storm and Sunny simultaneously slapped him upside the head.

Rey hadn’t moved, but now she uttered something like a low growl.

Snoke’s smile became, incredibly, even wider, which only served to disfigure his face further. “I’ve heard so much about you. Your extraordinary powers. So untutored, yet so strong. One such as you only comes along once in all the ages, and I consider myself very fortunate to live in such an age.” Snoke’s speech was precise, cultivated. There were no edges to his words, no unruly emotions, not even any threats. It seemed to throw Rey off somehow.

Finally she said, “Are you here to fight me or are you here to collect your apprentice?”

“Why my dear, I hoped to take on a _new_  apprentice, Rey,” said Snoke mildly. "You."

That, finally, was the trigger that set Rey off. “Why? So you can turn me into something as wretched as Kylo?” she said furiously. “Or do you think I’ll be some kind of mascot for your evil reign? Do you honestly believe I would ever come over to your side?” She was shouldering her staff and igniting her lightsaber as she spoke. “I’ll fight you!” she said. “You and all your murdering thugs!”

Snoke still didn’t move. He just tsked with his tongue and shook his head sadly, “You’re what, all of 19 years old? And burning bright with ambitions not your own, I see. You’re so sure you understand the secret workings of galactic politics, after such a short time with the Resistance. You must be exceedingly clever.”

“I know evil when I see it!” she snarled, and swished her lightsaber to and fro. But she hadn’t taken so much as a step towards him.

“Ah, youth,” said Snoke with an admiring chuckle. “So certain of itself. I am of an age when I can observe the galaxy and its concerns with the same calm as one of these stones here.” He gestured to the stones with which Ahch-To was well supplied (and a good few porgs as well, sitting stock-still among them). “I admire the passions of the young.”

His eyes focused beadily on Rey. “And _such_ large passions you have. There is light in you, but anger and fear are never far from the surface.”

“I’m not afraid,” she muttered, narrowing her eyes in turn. But Sunny noticed that the hand holding her lightsaber was drooping.

“Well. Come along then, and I’ll show you the galaxy as it really is. You’re ready to learn,” said Snoke. He gestured languidly, inviting her into the ship. Rey stared at him as if paralysed.

Sunny was amazed. Rey had come up here all high-hearted and filled with resolve, and now she was uncertain. Somehow Snoke had diminished her. Rey looked bewitched, and at this rate she’d be defeated without striking a single blow.

“Snoke’s a puffer-fish,” murmured Storm softly in Sunny’s ear. Sunny had to think a moment before he caught her meaning. Young porgs were sometimes fooled by a puffer fish swollen to its most intimidating form, when it looked like a majestic and fiercely-armed lord of the seas. In reality, although puffer fish had some teeth, they were hardly formidable opponents.

“I don’t see how we can tell her,” said Sunny. Then, on impulse, he croaked, “Uke! Uke! Eia! Kylo!”

Rey looked down at Sunny for an instant, and feeling flooded back into her face. She turned back to Snoke. “Yes! What did you do to Luke? What have you done to Kylo? You turned Leia’s son into his father’s murderer! They loved him, and you twisted it somehow!”

Now she raised her lightsaber with sure purpose, and lunged at Snoke. He raised his hand, and Sunny saw the ornate ring on it flash red, sending out a pulse of something that knocked Rey back. She rolled to her feet and came at Snoke again, teeth bared.

“Angry, are we?” he said lazily, and swiped that hand with its gleaming ring in a circle. Rey dodged something Sunny couldn’t see, then leaped, stabbing at Snoke with her lightsaber. He pointed at the ground and stones sprayed up, hitting her all over. Rey staggered back. She gave a yell of rage, but before she could make another leap, Snoke caused the ground under her feet dissolve in a flash. Rey had to jump out of the pit that had suddenly opened under her.

“Sure you want to use _that_ side of the Force?” Snoke asked. “Because I’m better at it than you, my dear. I’ve had ages more time to practice. It's something you could learn from me.”

It was a rout. Every time Rey got anywhere near landing a blow, Snoke made some insultingly casual counterattack, as though she wasn’t worth fighting seriously. He flung stones at her, flashed balls of fire in her eyes to blind her, made her own staff whip around and trip her. And as the fight went on, Sunny became aware that Snoke had something in his other hand. He’d pulled it out of his robes, and every time he got close to Rey, he was positioning it to fling it at her. Finally he got his chance. He’d half-blinded Rey with another fireball from his ring. Suddenly thin fibres flickered through the air. A net of some kind.

Some lucky fortune made Rey jump aside just in time, though the net touched her enough to make her cry out as though burned. Snoke stooped to gather up the net and, his patience gone, rushed at her. To Sunny’s amazement, Rey turned and ran, and Snoke ran after her. But if Rey had lost belief in her fighting skills, she had no doubts about her ability to run. Her feet pounded the grassy slopes in an accelerating drumbeat, ever faster the further she got from Snoke. Over the boulders she skipped like a flung stone, and Snoke, an ungainly insect in his flapping golden robe, couldn’t catch her.

“Come on!” squawked Sunny, and the porgs cannonballed down the slopes after them.

They were just in time to see Snoke chase Rey over a cliff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- - -  
> Dear readers, you've been generous with your comments and I love knowing that so many of you are enjoying this. I'm only sorry I haven't found time to reply to most of you. 
> 
> This is another story that wasn't meant to happen. I started it casually, as a bit of a joke, during a time when I knew I would be far too busy to write seriously. Probably nobody would read it, I thought, and it wouldn't go anywhere. The popularity of this story caught me by surprise! 
> 
> So I do love your comments and I do value your encouragement! Thank you all!


	15. Into the Cave

When Sunny caught up with Rey, she was barely clinging to a rock, dragged back and forth by waves that threatened to carry her away. Her hair was plastered to her head and she looked half-drowned.

The porgs popped up out of the water beside her, and she gave them a brief, tired smile. “You guys are loyal.”

“Except Strike. He went to present Snoke with a fish,” said Sunny. “Snoke’s still up there, capering around in his gold slippers like an idiot,” he said. They all craned their heads up to where the cliff leaned over them. Snoke’s footwear wasn’t the best for scrambling over a steep rocky island; his pursuit of Rey had been hampered by sharp stones and slippery grass. Sunny had been amused to see Snoke’s feet shoot out from under him a couple of times. Clearly he wasn’t going to risk approaching to the edge of the cliff, which dropped away in a steep bull-nose before being undercut by the sea.

Storm swam out a little way so she could see to the top. “He’s still there,” she reported. “He looks like a complete tit, with his robes flapping in the wind.”

A bolt of energy struck the sea near them. Storm dived underwater hurriedly and swam back to them.

“I think he can sense where I am, even if he can’t see me,” said Rey.

“Let’s go. I don’t want to find out what happens if his aim improves. Come on.” Sunny looked back at Rey and held out a flipper. She looked at him dubiously, unsure of what he’d said. He gestured, and the other porgs came beside Rey, urging her to let go of the rock. Sunny tugged at her sleeve. “We can get into the Jedi caves this way,” he said.

Rey seemed to understand the word, “Jedi,” at least. She let go of the rock and dog-paddled gamely through the choppy water with the porgs around her, guiding her. There was only one way to go in the strong current. Slowly they rounded a headland and were briefly exposed to view from above. Snoke must have been keeping pace with them, for a couple of bolts nearly hit them, making the water sizzle. Then there was a faint squawk from high above, and a moment later something else hit the water nearby with a flat smacking sound.

Sunny swam over to find Strike bobbing in the water, bloodied and barely conscious. “Help me with him,” he said to the other porgs. Three of them supported Strike between them and together they led Rey around the point to the next stretch of the coast. Here the cliff was eaten away by the sea into big arches.

Strike seemed to recover a little. “He kicked me!” he squawked feebly. “I offered Snoke that beautiful fish and he kicked me off the cliff.”

“What did you think would happen?” said Sunny, panting a little as he pushed Strike along. “We’ve heard enough to know that Uke fears him, and you saw the way he treated Rey just now.”

“He’s powerful,” muttered Strike weakly. “Wouldn’t it be better to get people like that on our side? You guys always go straight to fighting.”

“Sometimes it pays to be a bit more choosy,” said Storm.

They rounded another point. Beyond it the sea had made caves in the cliffs. The porgs guided Rey into the biggest one. She paddled in and landed at last on the strange dark beach at the back of the cave. Rough, sea-worn steps led to the Jedi complex’s back entrance.

The sunlight glancing off the waves outside lit the cave with a flickering green-and-silver light. It shone on the old carvings around the archway. Rey laid her hands on them curiously. Then her shoulders sagged and suddenly she had to sit on the steps.

“I _ran!”_ she said, furiously. “I barely even _tried_ to fight him. I am such a _coward!”_

Sunny leaned into her knee, murmuring comfort. But Rey would not be comforted.

“He made me feel like a child! Like he was this powerful, experienced lord who knew everything, and I was just a nobody! And maybe it’s true, but I don’t understand why it should matter so much. It doesn’t matter to the Force. It shouldn’t matter to me!”

“He’s a puffer fish,” said Sunny.

But Rey didn’t understand him. She gathered Sunny into her arms and stifled a sob. She sat there for a long moment, rocking him in her arms and rubbing her wet face on his head. Then she steadied her breathing. She reached a hand out to the carvings on the doorway again. “Jedi things, I guess,” she murmured. Closing her eyes, she relaxed, seeming to absorb the calming energy of the place. “Snoke’s power seems…less. I don’t think he can reach me in here.”

Her eyes snapped open. “And now it seems so clear to me. He didn’t really have power over me. He just made me think he did! So I ran, like a fool.” She put Sunny down and stood up, still holding on the carved frame of the doorway, fingering its designs.

“I’m sure I could defeat him,” she muttered. “But I can’t defeat him and Kylo together. If Kylo’s in here, I have to kill him first.”

Sunny and the porgs gave a shocked squawk. Rey looked down at them grimly. “I know, and I'm sorry. I suppose you've gotten used to having him around. But you wouldn't like him if you knew more about him, and I can’t risk him joining forces with Snoke.” She paused, stroking the carvings again. “The stones here…it’s like the place speaks to me. The Force probably agrees with you, for what it’s worth," she said, giving the porgs a wry look. "It resists conflict. But the Force isn’t mortal. It wants what it wants, and maybe that's not what I want.” She squared her shoulders and stood looking up at the steps that led into the dark.


	16. The Father You Never Had

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and Rey are finally in the same room together and there's nothing to stop them fighting to the death. 
> 
> Except words.
> 
> They're both about to find out some uncomfortable truths.

Rey drew her lightsaber and started up the dark stairway towards the Jedi Library. Her weapon made enough light to see by. But it also made her an easy target. After she’d mounted the first flight of stairs, she switched it off and glided softly up the tunnel.

The porgs pattered hurriedly after her. “You can’t kill Kylo,” said Strike.

“No, he’s right. He’s claimed his spot in the library fair and square,” said Sunny.

“Shush, porgs!” Rey whispered. “I don’t want him hearing me!”

“And we don’t want you sneaking up on him! It wouldn’t be fair!”

Rey knelt down. “Shush. Now guide me up to the library. Quietly!”

The porgs didn’t move. They just stood in a huddle, supporting Strike, who was still weak. Not that Rey could see any of that - her little giant’s eyes didn’t have a porg’s night vision.

“Please?” she said, reaching out and feeling for Sunny. After a moment patted her hand with his flipper and sighed. “All right. I can’t resist when you make those baby-porg eyes at me.”

And so they went along, Rey stooped over and touching Sunny’s head for guidance in what was, to her, pitch dark. The porgs muttered and shuffled behind them. Kylo might hear that, but he wouldn’t know Rey was among them. Sunny sighed again, wondering what he was getting them all into.

Light from the library began to show, and Rey let go of Sunny. She approached the library in a kind of stealthy rush, leaping past the entrances to the side-corridors with a wary glance down each one.

Sunny and the others hurried to catch up. When they got to the door of the library, Rey was already in there, storming in a silent fury up and down the aisles, lightsaber ignited. The sofas were empty.

“Where is he!” she muttered through gritted teeth.

“Where’s Stillwater?” asked Sunny.

“Here!” said a little voice, and Stillwater trundled out from behind a shelf, craning her neck to look doubtfully up at Rey. “Why’d you bring her in here?”

“Snoke’s outside trying to catch her or kill her.” Sunny spread his flipper-wings wide, and Stillwater came over to be hugged. She rubbed her cheek on his chest.

“We saw him. I showed Kylo some of the other air vents in the lower tunnels, and we could see Snoke from there.” She described what she’d seen and what other porgs outside could tell her: Snoke tripping and sliding his way around the island in his ridiculous slippers, stopping every now and then to stand still with his eyes closed and hands held out, perhaps trying to divine Rey’s location. “He was using the Force somehow, anyway,” she explained. “You know how you get that feeling like a storm is coming? And all the grass moves even though there’s no wind.”

“What did Kylo do? Was he trying to get his attention?” asked Sunny.

“No, he was trying to avoid being seen, I think. But look, if he fights Rey here, they’re going to wreck the place.”

Rey prowled around the library. But there was nothing there except books and scrolls, and a couple of fishy-smelling plates stacked to dry in the kitchen alcove. Then Rey stopped, listening. Sunny heard it too. Something was buzzing and twittering on the other side of the other library door. The one leading to the Jedi temple. The door Kylo couldn’t open.

Rey walked over to it, head cocked. “It’s the droids,” she said. She paused a moment, looking at the door, then slapped her hand gently on the palm-plate beside it.

The door rose with a soft hiss. BB-8 and Niney were waiting on the other side. BB-8 gave an admiring whistle, and both droids rolled in, twittering excitedly. Rey gave the door a puzzled look, then knelt down to speak to the droids. “I’m glad to see you! What’s Snoke doing? Where’s Kylo?”

Sunny couldn’t understand the droids’ replies, but the second question answered itself a moment later when Kylo strode in from the seaward door.

Rey whirled around and ignited her lightsaber. Kylo ignited his in response. Immediately the door behind Rey sliced down and shut with a clang, making them all jump. When they settled, Rey and Kylo were stock still, staring at each other with the electric intensity of two predators. Everywhere in the room, leaves of paper trembled and holocubes chimed against each other. The two droids twirled around and around on the spot, apparently unable to decide what to do.

Sunny and the porgs backed into the alcove and jumped up onto the shelf where the most precious books were kept. It seemed the safest place in the room. Kylo was blocking the exit and not even Strike wanted to risk going near the pent-up violence in him.

“They’re going to wreck everything, aren’t they?” Stillwater muttered through clenched teeth.

“Sorry,” said Sunny. “We had to get Rey somewhere safe from Snoke.” But it was hard to imagine she was in any less danger from Kylo. He was so big he could cross the room in a couple of lunging strides, and after seeing the slabs of muscles that made up his form, Sunny could imagine how quickly he would batter down Rey’s defences.

Of the two of them, Sunny would have picked Kylo as the first to attack. Yet despite the intensity of his gaze, he was keeping himself in check, merely holding his lightsaber in a guard position. Rey was taking deep, slow breaths, whether to calm herself or work herself up into making the first move, Sunny could not tell.

“You don’t have to do this,” Kylo stated quietly. His eyes never left her face.

“Are you afraid of me?” Rey said. Her voice was quivering with some high emotion, and Sunny guessed it wasn’t fear. There were two spots of fiery colour on her cheeks.

“No. I’m just tired of this.”

“Let me end it for you, then!” she said, and ran forward to strike. The two lightsabers met with a sizzling crack, and then slid past each other as the two fighters leaped apart. They did it again, and again, dodging around and over the shelves and furniture of the room. Rey was everywhere, almost dancing. But where Sunny had expected nothing more than raw brutal strength, Kylo surprised him. He was subtle and evasive, and most of Rey’s attacks slid off him like water running off a seabird’s well-oiled feathers.

“He’s avoiding the books and stuff,” said Stillwater approvingly.

Then suddenly Kylo had Rey pinned against the wall. She was only just holding him off, her lightsaber crossed against his, her body braced like a bow. But Kylo’s greater weight was bearing down on her. She shook from the strain.

“Just let it go, Rey.”

“Never!” she spat, eyes blazing. “How could I? I’ll never back down from a fight with you. You killed Han. Your own father. And he was…” She paused, panting slightly. “He was a good man.”

Kylo stared intently into her eyes, seeming to read something there. “You think he must have been a good father, don’t you? Something like what you imagined…like what you missed.”

Rey’s face seemed to twist away from painful memories, but she didn’t answer, and Kylo went on, his voice softer.

“He almost killed me three times, Rey. Tell me, did Han know you had the Force?”

The two lightsabers hummed, straining together, lighting both faces in a weird violet glow. Rey stared at Kylo with utmost suspicion for a long time before giving a tiny shake of her head. “No. I didn’t know myself.”

Kylo dipped his head so his long hair was almost brushing her forehead. She flinched, but could not pull away any further. “He hated the Force,” said Kylo flatly. “He tolerated it in Leia, because she never used it in ways he could detect. He tolerated it in Luke, because he was a pragmatist, and they were friends, and they were fighting on the same side. He could not stand to see it in me. He hated and feared it.”

Rey’s eyes widened and her lightsaber shook in her grasp. Sunny saw that Kylo could have pressed the advantage then, if he’d wanted to. There was no question of his greater strength. And more importantly, in the past few minutes he seemed to have withdrawn from his emotions into a calm that Rey lacked.

“Sorry Sunny, but I’d bet on Kylo. He’s balanced and Rey isn’t.”

Strike looked smug. “The Book of the Balance.”

“Reading must be wonderful thing,” said Sunny.

“I can guess more of people’s thoughts than other people,” Kylo told Rey. “You know what that’s like. You’re the same.”

Rey gave a tiny shake of her head, but Sunny sensed she was not disagreeing with Kylo as much as she was denying there were any similarities between them.

“Han would look at me, even as a tiny child, and wish I was…. _not,”_ said Kylo. “Not who I am. And three times he nearly killed me. Once in anger.” He shifted her hand and rolled his shoulder to pin it to the wall, freeing his off hand to touch an old healed scar on his chin. Rey watched, mesmerised. “And twice from neglect.” He touched another mark on his neck that Sunny couldn’t see. Rey’s eyes followed Kylo’s finger as though bewitched, before she looked up again, scanning every inch of the face so close to hers. She scarcely breathed.

“Even as a boy, he’d put me in situations where I was in danger. Maybe he wanted to test the Force. Maybe he wanted to be able to say afterwards that my weird powers weren’t that much use after all. Not as much use as a cool head and a blaster, as he’d say. Either way, he wanted me to fail. He wanted the Force to fail me, and I nearly died.”

“It doesn’t make it right, what you did,” Rey muttered.

“No. It makes it a tragedy, like everything in this family. It’s like we’re doomed by some curse,” said Kylo bitterly. “If I could turn back time, I’d choose differently. But I can’t.”

“Because you’re Snoke’s,” said Rey.

“No. Not any more. If I’ve learned one thing in this place…” Kylo gestured around the Jedi library. “Even if I never leave here, even if I die here, I’ll die free. Snoke’s power can’t reach me in here.”

“It’s protected from sea scorpions too. That’s why we nest here,” said Stillwater pedantically.

“Shut up, this is important,” said Strike, and threw a book at her. He missed, of course, since porgs can’t throw worth a damn.

Rey ignored them. She was looking at Kylo in fearful wonder. Then she looked around the library, the stacked books, the holocubes and scrolls, the sagging sofas, the desk with its little light, the high narrow window vents that Snoke had somehow not yet discovered.

“In this place, my thoughts are my own,” said Kylo firmly.

Rey’s mouth opened as though she had a hundred thoughts of her own, all fighting to be uttered. Then suddenly she yanked her hand free and punched him in the throat. With a couple of rough twists their hold on each other was broken and they sprang apart, holding their lightsabers.

“Stop talking to me!” she shouted, and backed away towards the alcove where Sunny and the others watched.

Rey’s lightsaber looked suddenly all too close, and for all the games they’d played together, Sunny didn’t feel safe at all. “I don’t think they’ve even noticed we’re here,” he said. The porgs jumped down, darted past Rey’s feet and hopped onto the sofas at the other end of the library.

Kylo stood rubbing his throat. “Careful with that lightsaber. You’ve got the whole of Jedi knowledge in this library,” he said, when he could speak again. The porgs murmured their agreement.

“Some of us want to live here, you know,” said Sunny. “Don’t set fire to it.”

Rey gave him an impatient look. She was tense, shifting her weight from foot to foot, poised for action. But it seemed to Sunny that she couldn’t decide what action to take. Kylo was quiet by comparison, leaning on the desk holding the Book of the Balance. Rey gestured towards it. “So what have you learned?”

“Are they going to fight, or talk?” muttered Stillwater.

“She’s buying time to think about what Kylo just said about his father, I think,” said Sunny. “You can see it shocked her.”

“The Balance,” started Kylo quietly, reciting from the book.

 _“Action and stillness_  
_What creates, and what destroys_  
_Expansion, and concentration_  
_The diversity of many forms, and the purity of one absolute_  
_Giving, and taking_  
_Attraction and separation._  
_Acquisition and loss_  
_Consider all these.”_

Rey didn’t answer. Just stared at Kylo’s fingers lying across the book.

“A time to act, and a time to observe,” he said, turning the page. Rubbing the old soft vellum with his fingertips.

Rey licked her lips nervously. “What does it mean?” she asked.

“What do you think it means?” asked Kylo.

Rey frowned, but did not answer.

“When you meditate, you feel the Force is out of kilter, don’t you?” Kylo pressed. “Like I do.”

Rey shot him a quick look that was almost frightened, and Sunny judged that Kylo had guessed her thoughts better than she liked. “A time to act…” she said quietly. Then she looked very directly at Kylo and some invisible message seemed to pass between them so they both blinked, surprised. “It was not Luke’s time to act,” said Rey. “It was mine. He should have understood that.”

“Yes,” said Kylo firmly. Rey caught her breath and looked away quickly.

Kylo gazed at her, his face stripped bare of animosity and strangely naked as a result. Rey was still, absorbed in her thoughts. Then she seemed to become aware of his intense interest. Her eyes flashed warningly.

“Stop it,” she muttered.

“It’s not my time to act,” said Kylo lightly, “I observe.”

Sunny could have sworn he was almost smiling as he looked at Rey.

“Well you’ve done plenty already,” said Rey, suddenly angry again. “What about Tuanul Village? Finn said they died on your orders.”

“What’s Tuanul?” hissed Storm.

Sunny and Stillwater both shrugged. “Never heard of it either,” they said.

Kylo seemed to know immediately what Rey was talking about. “They are the enemy, Rey,” said Kylo, speaking over the porgs. “This is a war.”

The porgs shut up in the face of Rey’s obvious distress. “Women. Children. Everyone,” she said, in a voice thin as a knife.

Kylo shut the book and shifted uncomfortably. “They weren’t innocents. Tuanul was training intelligence teams and harnessing the Force. They were a threat to the First Order.”

“That’s rubbish!” Rey burst out.

“They were. I found the Resistance operative I was searching for there.”

Rey paused, and Sunny could see her uncertainty. “So your… _.target_ hid there,” she went on at last. “But what about everyone else you murdered? They were innocent!”

“How would you know? It was an undercover operation. The information I had from Hux said they were developing slicer tech to spy on us and training an elite corps to attack us.”

“Slicer tech?” said Rey, sounding very surprised. “Tuanul villagers _hated_ tech! The most advanced tech they had was the vaporator tower that collected their water. Even then they had to argue for months about where to put it in case it broke some religious rule.”

“How would you know what they really did at Tuanul?” asked Kylo. “You were in Niima Outpost. Of course you wouldn’t know Tuanul’s real purpose.”

“I know the place well!” said Rey. “Sometimes we’d hear about good salvage around there and we’d go out there to break it down. I spent quite a few seasons living in the village while we worked. They didn’t have secret computer labs. They didn’t have tech, they didn’t _like_ tech. Otherwise we would have tried to sell our salvage to them instead of Unkar.”

“I’m surprised Unkar let you out of his sight for so long,” said Kylo.

“I was working in teams he’d put together. They needed me to get in small spaces.”

There was a silence. Kylo seemed to be examining some uncomfortable ideas. Sunny could see a muscle in his jaw jumping erratically.

“They probably kept their covert ops teams out of sight, though,” Kylo insisted.

“I doubt it. It’s a tiny place. I spent months with them once thinking I might join them. All they do is chant and make rituals around the Force.”

“Really?” asked Kylo. He looked shaken.

“Well, that and meetings. They’d argue for weeks about what the ancient texts meant.” Rey snorted. “Whether you must drink water during a meal or afterwards. Should you pass a plate with your left hand. Would a new tool-shed would be luckier if they built it round instead of square, and facing sunrise rather than north?” She sighed, giving Kylo a disgusted look. “Most of them were nice enough people, but they were a bit useless.”

“If they were so useless, then what did they live on?” asked Kylo. “Unless the Resistance was supplying them?”

“They made little religious icons and sold them to Church of the Force followers around the galaxy. I thought they were junk, but apparently they were valuable because they came from Jakku.”

Another uncomfortable silence, Kylo frowning and running the edge of one nail on the back of a chair, making a groove in the lustrous wood.

“Women and children and old men, Kylo,” Rey continued. “They carved dinky little stone amulets and worshiped the Force. Which, before you ask me, they didn’t understand.”

“Sounds like us porgs, only more industrious,” said Stillwater, after the silence had stretched for a while. “Here we are, practically living in a Jedi temple, and we know nothing about it…”

Kylo and Rey ignored her. Rey was staring fiercely at Kylo. Now it was he who seemed afraid to meet her gaze.

“Maybe we should learn handicrafts,” suggested Sunny brightly. The tension was getting to him.

“No hands, you moron,” said Strike.

Stillwater had been fiddling with a loose thread pulled from her sofa. Now she held up her flippers with it looped in an intricate pattern around her claws. “Behold!” she said triumphantly.

“What’s that?” said Sunny.

“We’ll call it a Jedi Spirit Catcher. Made with devotion in the holiest place in Jedi legend.”

“I can’t imagine how we’ll keep up with the demand once the galaxy learns about those,” muttered Strike.

“Oh, be quiet. Kylo and Rey are trying to think,” grumbled Sunny. “And stop pulling our sofa to pieces, Stillwater.”

Ignoring the porgs, Rey resumed her attack on Kylo. “Did you really believe they were harnessing the Force at Tuanul? Tell me, did _you_ feel Force powers from anyone there?”

Sunny could hear Kylo’s quick intake of breath. “No,” he said, his eyes widening. From his look, Sunny suspected he was drawing some conclusions he didn’t like. “They had nothing. Otherwise they would have realised what _you_ were.”

“Did you even _see_ the people you ordered killed?” said Rey, and now her gaze was locked on Kylo’s eyes. Something seemed to pass between them, and both of them flinched.

“I saw…the enemy agent I’d been sent to find. We talked, and he was…defiant,” whispered Kylo, looking slightly sick. “The other people, I didn’t really…I assumed they were…something else caught my attention before I looked at them. The stormtrooper who defected. FN-2187. He was the only one not shooting at them.”

Sunny couldn’t interpret Rey’s mood now as she looked at Kylo; many emotions seemed at war in her. There was distaste in her expression, certainly. Or maybe even anger. But also…pity? “You went in to Tuanul expecting this big threat…” she said.

There was another long silence. Kylo stared straight ahead, unseeing. His face was as still as ice; something was at war under it. Sunny was reminded of the great polar sheet ice; he’d heard descriptions of how the great stillness broke at the sun’s touch, all shards and violence.

Strike limped over and climbed onto to the arm of the chair next to Kylo. Kylo sank his fingers into Strike’s plumage, rubbing it absently.

“Traitor,” muttered Sunny.

“Oh come on, Strike’s always going to be Team Kylo,” said Stillwater.

“Sounds like Kylo destroyed an entire village. We don’t want to end up like them. It’s a smart move to keep him calm,” said Strike told them reasonably.

Stillwater gave him a skeptical look. Strike merely purred and leaned up against Kylo, who relaxed visibly at the contact.

Kylo looked up at Rey again. “Why didn’t you stay in Tuanul? It sounds like an easier life than you had at Niima.”

“Once I got a bit older they got a new leader. He kept asking if there wasn’t something _more_ I could offer to the Church. Maybe I could become one of the his wives. Insisted it was the will of the Force.”

Kylo’s face tightened. “And?”

“I didn’t go back to Tuanul much after that.”

Sunny watched Kylo narrowly, sensing a growing tension beneath his apparent self-control.

Rey watched too. “Who told you Tuanul was a secret spy village again?” she asked after a while.

Kylo still wouldn’t look at her. “Snoke. And Hux.”

“Perhaps they lied to you,” said Rey quietly.

Kylo opened his mouth to retort, and then shut it. He looked even more uncomfortable. His eyes held a dangerous glitter.

“You’ve been lied to before,” said Rey. “I can tell.”

“By my _family!”_ roared Kylo, standing up suddenly. His fists were clenched. “They were the biggest liars of all.”

“The First Order lied to you about Tuanul. They were just a bunch of hopeless star-gazers. They were never part of your war!”

Kylo drew his lightsaber. The porgs yattered nervously, wondering if the famous killer was going to live up to his reputation and turn violent.

He did, but it was all directed at the door that was keeping him locked in. His lightsaber rose and fell in red slashes against a door that remained obstinately unmarked. He was snarling, “They’re all liars! They’ve _all_ lied to me!” He swept some books off another shelf. “This is probably all lies too!”

Sunny and Stillwater plumped themselves up into angry cushions, eyes slitted with disapproval. But Kylo didn’t seem particularly open to criticism right at that moment.

Rey jumped forward and made a lightning grab at Kylo’s lightsaber. It all happened so fast that Sunny couldn’t follow what happened. All he saw was the hilt of Kylo’s lightsaber flying up and out of one of the windows. A porg outside squawked.

“Take that and run!” Sunny shouted hastily at whoever was out there. Kylo shoved Rey out of the way and reached out the window after his lightsaber. But it was gone. He jumped down and sagged against the door. Rey paced in front of him him, lightsaber raised. She reminded Sunny of a deadly sea-scorpion.

“You fool,” said Kylo. “You want Snoke to get that lightsaber?” He slapped the wall in frustration. “Now Snoke’ll know for sure that I’m here too.” He struck the wall again. This time his hand hit the door’s palm plate.

The door opened.

Everyone stared at it in disbelief.

Then the black droid zipped out from behind some shelving, waving her sensor arms and screeching with excitement.

“It was the lightsaber?” Kylo and Rey asked her.

“The door was responding to its kyber crystal. That’s why it only shut for you,” Rey said.

Sunny snickered quietly. “If he’d put the the lightsaber down before opening the door, he could have walked out of here days ago.”

“Well it would be good if that door had _stayed_ shut, because now Snoke can walk right in,” said Kylo acidly. “And if he can do that, I need my lightsaber back!” With that he ran through the doorway towards the Jedi Temple and the way out.

With a grimace, Rey ran after him, the two droids spinning and whirring at her heels.


	17. Temple

“We’ve got to stop them killing each other!” shrilled BB-8.

“Mission objective: limit mayhem,” Niney buzzed to herself uncertainly. Limiting mayhem was not one of her strengths. But BB-8 was already gone, so Niney raced after him. "Do you really think she’s going to kill him?”

“I don’t know and neither does she!” shrieked BB-8. A second later they were in the Jedi Temple. Niney rammed Rey’s ankles, shoving her off Kylo’s tail.

She needn’t have bothered. The Jedi Temple on its own was such as spectacle as to stop Rey right in her tracks, and Kylo, hearing the pursuit fall silent, stopped and turned as well. Both of them stood, mouths open, taking it in: the golden walls, the frieze of dancing figures from a hundred worlds and species, the rayed disc of the Light above the great throne, the splendid vaulted ceiling, all reflected in the shining floor.

The porgs arrived and stood in a huddle by the door. They were the only ones looking unimpressed.

“Wow,” said Rey shakily, shooting Kylo an uncertain glance. “I didn’t know this was here.” She lowered her lightsaber a fraction.

“I don’t think she’d kill Kylo right here,” said BB-8. “It’s probably too holy.”

Niney gave a low whistle of relief. “I hope you’re right. I’ve got my empathy processors running at maximum gain and I still can’t read her.”

BB-8 gave the droid equivalent of a shrug. “She’s not usually this complicated. Being around Kylo seems to put her off-balance.”

Kylo and Rey kept a wary eye on each other, but most of their attention was on the carvings and inscriptions that flourished on the walls around them. Rey extinguished her lightsaber but kept a tight grip on the hilt.

“Imagine a time when the Jedi Order was so big that it needed this huge hall,” she said softly. “It’s like I can still feel their power in these walls.”

“There is protection in these walls,” Kylo said. “I think they block some of Snoke’s powers. The crystal in my lightsaber responds to the ring he wears. It told me when he arrived but the link was so weak, it was just a twitch, not a real signal. I don’t think he can tell where we are.”

Rey looked at him appraisingly. “How well can you sense his presence normally?”

Kylo’s mouth twisted. “It’s like he’s in my head. Not words but…judgements. Pushing me in one direction, or cutting me down. Or...praise, sometimes," he muttered. He gave Rey a tired look and saw her appalled expression. “I didn’t realise how hateful it was until it was gone.”

“Well that explains a lot,” said Niney to BB-8. “If Rey’s hard to read, Kylo’s a nightmare.”

Kylo began pacing slowly up one aisle of the temple, looking around him. Rey did the same on the other side.

Niney gave a buzz of alarm and scooted towards the huge golden seat at the head of the hall. BB-8 was hot on her heels, shrilling “No, no, no no!”

Kylo walked towards the throne. “I wonder who used to sit here…” he murmured.

Both droids shrieked and moved to block him. “Don’t touch it!”

“Why not?”

Niney jittered on the spot, wailing softly with fear. What she had done was so monstrous that she had probably better get ready to flee for her miserable positronic life.

Rey walked around the throne curiously. BB-8 rolled at her feet, making sure she kept a safe distance.

“It’s not just a throne,” she said, and flung the droids a speculative look. “It’s a holographic platform as well.”

“Like Snoke’s throne,” said Kylo. Niney pictured the leaders of the light and the dark sending holographic threats from their respective thrones.

Rey bent down suddenly, and Niney knew she’d seen a loose panel in the back of the throne. “Somebody’s tampered with this,” Rey said.

Kylo looked down at Niney, swaying and trembling at his feet. She looked back, trying to read him. Her loyalty circuits were screaming and her empathy processors felt on the point of melting. She knew Kylo feared Snoke. Raged at him sometimes, craved his approval other times, bowed to his wishes always. Well, not always.

Not lately.

What did it mean?

 _I am Kylo’s droid. I am a First Order droid unit. I am Kylo’s droid. I am a First Order unit. I am Kylo’s droid. The Supreme Leader is his leader. The Supreme Leader is my leader. I am Kylo’s droid_ …Niney’s thoughts ran in an endless loop and she chittered wildly in binary, too fast for Kylo to follow.

“Niney?” Kylo asked.

BB-8 saved her the trouble of speaking. Proudly, he said, “Niney’s so smart. She had all this gold leaf she’d scraped off the walls. She rolled it into wires and hooked up the holographic projector circuits to electrocute whoever sat on the throne.”

Niney fell still and a little puff of steam escaped her dome. Kylo stared at her until she buzzed in a tiny little voice, “It won’t kill him.” Kylo continued to stare at her, and she added in an even smaller voice, “But it’ll mess him up pretty bad.”

“Niney said that if Snoke walked in here, there’s no way he could resist sitting on a big fancy throne like this,” BB-8 explained.

A slow smile broke over Kylo’s tired, grim face like sunshine and he crouched down next to Niney. “Really? What a perceptive little droid you are! That is exactly what Snoke would do.” He examined the curlicues of gold leaf Niney had laid out just where a person’s feet would rest if they sat on the throne. “Very attractive,” he commented. His eyes traced where the threads of gold led across the marble to the back of the throne. Niney had taken the trouble to lay them in decorative loops before beating them flat so they looked like part of the floor’s design.

“And very much live. If Snoke sits there with those stupid gold slippers, he’ll earth the current,” said Rey with such relish that Kylo turned his smile on her. They both looked away quickly, embarrassed.

Niney was still crouched quivering at Kylo’s feet. “You’re not…mad at me?”

Kylo patted her dome. “I’m amazed at you.”

Niney spun away to twirl around and around, twittering with relief.

“But why did you do it?” Kylo asked.

“She must _hate_ Snoke,” said Rey fiercely. “Everyone thinks droids can’t have opinions, but they do! You can’t just programme in their loyalty and expect it to last forever! Not if you act like…” She didn’t finish, but BB-8 whistled approvingly, and Kylo nodded, looking impressed.

“They’ve got minds of their own," he agreed. "Most people don’t notice."

Niney took courage from this. “Kylo, if Snoke is..." She still couldn't say _your enemy._ "If Snoke is ... outside your loyalty functions now, he will try to eliminate you. I calculate that you and Rey won’t defeat him, even if you get your lightsaber back. I’ve watched you oppose him before. The stronger your feelings, the more power he drains from you.”

“I should have known!” hissed Rey. “When I tried to fight him, I felt…” She trailed off without saying what she’d felt, but her disappointment with herself was obvious.

Kylo’s eyes darkened and he folded his arms, hunching over to avoid Rey’s gaze. “But now, I’m sure it’ll be different! This place has helped me break his hold over me.”

Niney tugged at his pants with one claw. “We think 5000 volts would break his hold over you a whole lot better.”

Kylo threw his head back gave a sudden bark of laughter. “You’re right!”

Rey had drifted quietly over from behind the throne and now she stood with her arms folded, looking sternly at Kylo. “I want to take down Snoke. I believe we can do it together. It doesn’t mean we’re friends. It doesn’t mean I like you. But this is something we can do better if we work with each other.”

Kylo nodded, and Niney saw something in him relax. “Now we just have to lure Snoke in here,” he said.

“The main entrance to the Jedi complex is easy enough to find. It’s not far from where Snoke landed,” Rey said. “But I could never find the way down from the upper levels to here.”

The porgs had wandered over to listen to the discussion. Now they squawked for attention, waving their flipper-wings urgently. Kylo and Rey went over to them and Niney followed to see if she could help translate.

Apparently the porgs had no trouble finding the way into the Jedi temple from the top corridors; they thought it was strange humans couldn’t.

Then: “Ightsaber,” said one porg distinctly. “Ky’o’s ightsaber.”

“Bait,” guessed Niney. “They’ll use his lightsaber to lure Snoke in here.”

“You think you can bring Snoke in here?” asked Rey. The porgs nodded emphatically. Rey picked up her favourite porg and rubbed her cheek on his soft feathers. “I know you guys are tough," she said. "If you're really sure....then go, please, and good luck." She put him down with a pat. He gave a sharp yawping cry and led the porgs out of the door to the upper corridors.

"Take care!" Rey called after them.

One porg remained behind, the one who’d been living on the sofa next to Kylo’s in the library. He seemed to have been injured. Kylo bent down and picked him up, smoothing down his broken feathers. “Looks like you’ve been in the wars already, little guy.”

“Snoke!” squawked the porg, and rage-vomited up a pellet of semi-digested fishbones to show how he really felt.

“You’re not the first person to feel that way about Snoke,” said Kylo. “You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt worse.” The injured porg settled into the crook of his elbow.

Something that might almost have been a smile lightened Rey’s features. Kylo met her eye for a moment and she looked away, blushing. Niney had to admit there was something oddly appealing about Kylo just then: a powerful, volatile man who was still for once, gently holding his little porg friend. She didn’t think anyone else had ever seen that side of him.


	18. Bringing in Snoke

As it turned out, Sunny didn’t have to explain their plan to the other porgs on the island. They’d already figured out that Snoke was attracted by the lightsaber Rey had thrown out of the library air vent, and they were determined to keep it away from him.

Sunny, Stillwater and Storm stood near the entrance to the Jedi Temple complex. They could see Snoke standing in a meditative trance on a rock outcrop further down the hill, hands upraised. The wind stirred his golden robes so they flared and caught the light. Then he clasped one skeletal hand around the other, and Sunny saw the faint red flash of the ring Snoke wore. A moment later Snoke’s head whipped around like a sea-snake sighting its prey and he moved suddenly from his place, striding over to a spot fifty metres away.

Sunny knew the lightsaber was there because he could hear the porgs in that direction saying, one after another, “Pass it here”. And pass it they did, sliding it or rolling it to each other between the rocks, quick and low, out of Snoke’s sight. When he reached the place where the lightsaber had been a moment ago, he could see nothing but grass, stones and the occasional porg regarding him with a bland expression. Snoke looked around keenly, then felt among the nearest stones. Some of them came to life, squawking and yattering. With an exasperated snarl, Snoke picked up two of them and threw them away. When they’d finished bouncing and rolling, they lay there snickering quietly.

Snoke stood again, trying to master his irritation and get back into his trance. Arms stretched out, he turned slowly as though searching for a signal, a trace of something in the air or light. His foot landed on a porg and he staggered. The porg shot away, yawping with laughter.

“Gods, these giants are so entertaining,” said Stillwater. “We’d better get to work, though.”

Sunny nodded, and raised his voice. “Over here! Pass the lightsaber here! We’ll lure Snoke into the temple with it.”

The nearest porgs passed the message down until it reached whoever had the lightsaber. Sunny and his friends waited, answering questions relayed from porgs further away. Eventually they heard a light “clink” and the lightsaber appeared, pushed stealthily towards them between two rocks close by.

Snoke was a hundred metres away at this point, trying to tune into his Force senses, though his nerves were clearly getting frayed.

“I wonder if he knows it’s the just lightsaber, or whether he thinks Kylo’s still with it?” asked Stillwater. “It looks like he’s getting some sort of signal, but he can’t tell what he should be looking for.”

“Let’s see what happens if I do this,” said Sunny. He gripped the lightsaber hilt in his claws, brought it up to his mouth and bit down on the button he’d seen Kylo use to ignite it. The red blade sprang to life, almost knocking Sunny down. He regained his balance. Stillwater helped steady him and together they waved the lightsaber back and forth.

Snoke’s head had come up like a bird of prey’s the moment the lightsaber ignited, and he was glaring up the hillside towards them. Sunny knew the blade must be clearly visible against the dark entrance to the Jedi complex. Even from this distance, Snoke’s stare sent shivers down his spine.

Sunny switched it off. “Game on!” he said, hoping he sounded a lot braver than he felt. Snoke’s long legs were eating up the distance between them. Stillwater gave Sunny an encouraging slap and all the porgs ran into the Jedi tunnels.

By the time Snoke reached the tunnels there were porgs everywhere, pattering in all directions. The entry to the Jedi Temple itself was down a couple of turns and zig-zags, hidden by an optical illusion that was child’s play to the porgs but apparently worked on humans, thanks to some trickery of the Force. “Snoke’s been through here five times already without noticing,” said a porg who’d followed them in.

Sunny grunted to show he’d heard. He was out of breath. The lightsaber was heavy.

“Here, I’ll hold it a minute. You light it up,” said Stillwater. They did that, and a moment later they could hear the purposeful slap of Snoke’s footsteps drawing nearer. He appeared around a corner, terrifyingly tall and fast. His eyes were blazing with anger.

“I think he’s figured out we’re playing him,” panted Storm. Sunny gulped and nodded. Turning off the lightsaber again, he dived through the gap in the wall to the hidden door. It opened easily for them and they ran through, right under Snoke’s furious gaze.

“No way he’s missing the door this time!” gasped Sunny. And it was true: he could hear Snoke giving the doorframe a victory slap on his way through.

“Now I’ve got you, you little beasts!” he gloated.

“Run!” yelled Stillwater. “I’ll trip him up.”

“No, just stay out of his way!” shouted Sunny. “He’ll kill you!” Together the three porgs scurried down the splendidly carved corridor towards the Jedi Temple, their feet a blur of motion under them.

But it was no use. Sunny felt the giant looming over him, breath hissing, then the great footfalls, stupid slippers or no, were suddenly among them, kicking his companions out of the way. The feathers on his neck parted as an arm swooped down and a huge, scarred hand seized the lightsaber hilt and wrenched it out of his grip.

Everybody stopped. Snoke straightened up and stared at the porgs, his eyes glittering. “I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re doing, but when I leave here I’m going to burn every last one of you up,” he said distinctly. He glanced at the lightsaber with a small, ugly smile, then looked down the corridor towards the temple. They could see the great doors leading to the temple’s foyer, half open. Somewhere, late sunlight was entering through high window slits, generating a golden glow that hinted at the splendour of the halls beyond.

“If I’m not mistaken, I’ve got things to do and people to see in there,” said Snoke. He turned his heel on the porgs and stalked towards the doors.

“Did you see all the sweat running down those scars on his scalp? Disgusting,” said Stillwater. "And his head looks like it's been split in half and put back together wrong."

“Gross, all right,” agreed Storm. _“Rivers_ of sweat, though.”

“Streams. Absolutely _gushing.”_

“I think his nose was running too.”

“Probably allergic to feathers. How foul.”

“I see what you did there.”

Sunny was too traumatised to join in. He’d thought those bony fingers were going to close around his neck. Shuddering, he started out after Snoke towards the Jedi temple. The others followed, still elaborating on Snoke’s appearance.

Through the foyer and into the temple they ran. There, they were silenced by a shocking sight.

Snoke stood with his back to them, facing the golden throne. Kylo was standing near it, one hand holding Rey’s arms twisted up behind her back, the other holding Rey’s own blue lightsaber against her throat. Sunny didn’t know what was worse, the look of smug triumph on Kylo’s face or the sick betrayal on hers.

Strike limped over to the porgs from behind a pew. “Kylo grabbed Rey as soon as Snoke appeared,” he explained.

Snoke held up Kylo’s lightsaber, ignited it and swished it through the air in salute before switching it off again. “I thought I was returning a careless apprentice the lightsaber he lost, but I see you’ve found another one.” There was a smirk in his voice that made Sunny’s feathers stiffen.

An arrogant smile curled the corners of Kylo’s mouth. “A better one. My grandfather's. Darth Vader's lightsaber is mine at last,” said Kylo. Rey snarled, her eyes flashing hatred, but there was nothing she could do.

Snoke stalked slowly towards the pair down the centre aisle. The porgs shuffled quietly after him, keeping to the sides of the hall. They sensed an epic battle brewing, one that would be told down the generations, and they didn’t want to miss any of it.

“Well, well, well,” said Snoke lightly. His eyes were all on Rey. “This one could clean up nicely, I think. Give her a bath and put her in black robes and she would look quite fetching. Our enemies should be grateful to die by such an attractive hand,” he said. Then his voice hardened. “For you will join us, young lady.”

“I will _never!”_ said Rey, twisting in Kylo’s grip. He jerked her arms roughly so she gasped in pain.

“You will serve me, or I will break you,” said Snoke quietly.

Rey looked up at him in fury, almost in despair. She hadn’t given up yet, but Sunny could see that she was wilting in the face of Snoke’s overwhelming presence. He smiled at her, and Sunny could well believe that he was draining her power. He looked completely relaxed.

“You might have let me know what you were doing,” Snoke said to Kylo, and Kylo stiffened and ducked his head.

“I am sorry, Master. My ship was destroyed, I was trapped in here and the temple itself had some power that blocked me from signalling you. I am only thankful you found me anyway.”

Snoke stared at him, considering. There were plenty of questions he might have asked, but Kylo forestalled them by dragging Rey a few paces towards the throne and forcing her roughly to her knees. “The Force is with us, and things have worked out even better than I’d hoped,” he said over his shoulder to Snoke. “Rey might as well get used to kneeling to her new Master.”

The shadow of suspicion left Snoke’s face and he brightened as he looked at the golden throne. He walked over and turned, standing in front of it. His eyes were bright with anticipation.

“Bow to me, Rey, and I will accept your defeat. And believe me, soon enough you’ll sit at my right hand and accept the final defeat of the Resistance with as much pleasure as I accept yours now.” Snoke was almost chewing his words with relish, as though addressing some huge audience in his imagination.

“Pompous wanker,” whispered Stillwater. Sunny elbowed her to be quiet.

Rey tried to lash out with her feet, but her position on the ground was too cramped. She bit Kylo instead, a solid bite that must have hurt even through his armoured sleeves. He shook her off and forced her down again.

Snoke smiled and licked his lips, enjoying the show. His eyes sparkled with cruel pleasure.

“By all the gods, I swear _I_ will bite him! Right now!” said Strike. “If I die with my teeth locked around his ankle, I will count it an honourable end!”

“So let it be spoken; so let it be told, unto the last generations,” intoned the other porgs, as ritual demanded. But they grabbed him by his flippers to hold him back because they didn’t, in fact, want to see Strike slaughtered by Snoke.

“Who’s your master, Rey? Let me hear you say it,” said Snoke tauntingly. Kylo nudged her closer with one foot then rammed her shoulders against the floor with his knee.

Rey twisted her head up to show her teeth, and shook her head.

“I can wait as long as it takes, Rey,” said Snoke.

He sat down on the throne.

Immediately his body arched and his hands spasmed uncontrollably, clenching on the arms of the throne while his feet drummed on the floor and kicked at the air.

Kylo instantly let go of Rey. She snatched the lightsaber from his hand and sprang to her feet. Kylo made a grab for it but she brushed him aside as if he weighed nothing.

“Go, then!” said Kylo, and gave her a shove towards Snoke. Rey brought the lightsaber up high then slashed it down with such force that the blade split Snoke’s head in half, and Sunny judged there’d be no putting it back together this time.

Force and electricity arced and sparkled in all directions. Snoke continued to shudder uncontrollably on the chair, but he was dead even before Rey pulled the lightsaber out of him.

She stepped back. Her hair was standing on end. It settled back down slowly. She turned to Kylo, who was bent over, hands on his knees, breathing hard as though he’d run a race. His hair fell about his face in disordered snakes.

“Thank you,” he said indistinctly.

But Rey wasn’t having it. Sunny saw how tightly she gripped the lightsaber still. With great deliberation, she switched off the blade. She clipped it to her belt with shaking hands and stood, fists clenched.

“Don’t let her hit him!” said Strike, limping closer.

“She won’t. She doesn’t hit unless it’s necessary. Or effective,” said Sunny, speaking more on hope than evidence, because Rey was looking outright murderous in that moment.

“I hope you’re right,” said Stillwater. “Not everyone's as tolerant as you, Sunny.”

Sunny puffed his feathers, warmed by Stillwater’s praise.

Rey was still glaring at Kylo.“Thanks for _what,_ Kylo? Grovelling on command?”

Kylo’s head snapped up as though she'd slapped him. He straightened to his full height. “You knew I had to get him to sit on there somehow! And he could read my _mind,_ Rey! The only thing that would stop him realising what I was up to was to offer him you. I knew Snoke wouldn’t be able to resist watching you suffer. He’d want to bathe in your tears.”

“How was I to know? I thought maybe you and that droid were tricking me! What if she hadn’t wired up the throne like she said?”

Kylo’s face had gone very white, and he was shaking. “One thing I am _not,_ Rey, is a _liar,_ ”  he spat. Sunny could see a dangerous spark in his eyes.

Rey quailed a little at that, but she still had anger to spare. “I thought…” She threw her hands up, searching for the words she wanted. “I’ll _tell_ you what I thought. You kidnapped me before. You enjoyed your power _so much._ Now finally you had me right where you wanted me.”

Sunny thought Kylo was going to explode. “Do you think I _enjoyed_ that?” he roared. His voice echoed harshly from the high corners of the room, frighteningly loud.

Rey stared at him, shocked. “I thought…” she began. But whatever Rey thought, Kylo’s stricken expression silenced her. With a gasp, she turned and ran out.

“Why do you have to spoil _everything!”_ Kylo shouted. Sunny thought he was going to run after her, but he just stood, fingers twitching as though he’d like to do something awful to someone.

“Probably just as well Rey didn’t finish that sentence,” guessed Sunny. Kylo heaved a great sigh, then turned away from the sound of Rey’s disappearing feet. He cast a black look towards Snoke’s body. The droids came out from behind the throne, triumphantly waving a length of gold wire. Niney prodded Snoke’s leg to show the current was gone.

“Good work, Niney,” said Kylo tiredly, rubbing the top of her dome. “Snoke dead at last.” He shook his head wonderingly. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

Stillwater shuffled over to Snoke’s body for a closer look. “Somebody’s going to have to clean that up,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

Kylo gave an angry shrug. He probably understood her, but his only response was to walk back to the Jedi Library and throw himself down on his sofa. Niney followed him, twittering happily.

“I think he probably did, a little bit,” said Storm, looking after Kylo. Sunny gave her a blank look. “Want to hurt her, I mean,” she continued. “It can’t have been much fun being beaten by Rey. He’s probably been itching to beat the snot out of her for ages.”

“You don’t understand him at all,” said Strike loftily, and limped over to join Kylo on his couch.

“Come on,” said Sunny to the others. “I think Rey needs us.”

 

\-   -    -   -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
>  <http://tehanufromearthsea.tumblr.com/post/167595701830/the-latest-chapter-of-porgs-is-up-thanks-again-to>
> 
> @actual-docter made this adorably cute piece of art for this story, which was a wonderful thing to do, thank you!
> 
>  
> 
>  


	19. At Last, We Fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enormous thanks to Darkling and Eleanor for helping this fic have the romantic ending it deserves. They are generous souls with a gift for making a scene ring true.
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -

The porgs caught up with Rey standing by Snoke’s ship where it perched on the island’s peak like a deadly insect. The ramp was in front of her, a graceful bridge leading up to the open hatch. Rey was standing on the blasted ground under the ship, staring up at the shadowy interior. Everything about the ship was exquisite. The setting sun picked out the polished fittings within. Dark. Shiny. Inviting.

“You’re leaving?” asked Sunny.

Rey looked down sadly at the porgs. As sometimes happened when her thoughts were far away, she seemed to understand Sunny intuitively. “No. I don’t think I could stand being in Snoke’s ship. Kylo can take it and and go…” She paused, and her eyes darkened. “Go…wherever he’s going next,” she finished uncertainly. Her face, staring up at the ship, was full of longing. But she sighed and turned away. “I can wait. I’ve done plenty of that in my life,” she told the porgs. “The Resistance knows I’m here. They’ll come, sooner or later.”

She made her way down the path to Luke’s hut.

“I think she wants company,” said Sunny. Storm agreed. They started down after Rey, but Stillwater said, “I’m going to get something. See you in a minute.”

In Luke’s hut, Rey busied herself with the fish chowder she’d inherited from him. Every day since he’d left, she’d eaten some and added more of whatever she could catch from the sea or harvest from Luke’s garden. Technically it was the very same chowder Luke had started years ago. Its steam carried a cargo of flavour that was positively historic.

“Any for us?” asked Sunny. She fed them some pieces of fish from her hands, and they clucked their thanks.

She filled her own bowl and went to sit on a stone bench outside the hut, leaning against the wall and looking up at the sky. She ate, mechanically. The sun had settled behind purple clouds on the horizon, but it still sent golden rays up into a rose-coloured sunset. Sighing again, Rey looked over at Sunny and patted the space beside her. Sunny thought briefly of going down to find out what Stillwater was up to, but Rey’s obvious sadness made him hop up on the bench. Storm yawned and fluffed herself into a soft grey lump beside the door.

When Rey had licked the bowl clean, she pulled Sunny into her lap, wrapping herself around him. After a moment Sunny felt something wet drip onto his head.

Sunny nudged Rey’s wrist. “Hey. Cheer up. You killed Snoke. A powerful enemy, by all accounts.”

Again, Rey seemed to understand him. “Yes,” she said. “Very powerful. There’ll be celebrations all over the galaxy because of what we did today.” She stroked Sunny’s head and drew in a deep, sniffling breath. “With your help. You were brilliant.”

Storm clucked her approval from her spot on the floor, but Sunny asked, “Why so sad, then?”

Another huge, gusting sigh from Rey. “Luke taught me to be fair. He _tried_ to teach me, I mean. Even when Kylo arrived, and Luke had every reason to hate him, he tried to hold me back from being cruel. And he was right.”

Sunny felt a little ripple of strangeness that must be the Force, for she understood him without effort now, as though reading his mind. It was an interesting experience.

Rey held Sunny up so they could see each other’s faces. “Luke was trying to teach me that I wasn’t given all these powers just so I could get even with people.”

“But Kylo’s your enemy,” said Sunny. “To us, he was a respectful and studious visitor to our nesting space. But we saw that you had a feud with him.”

“Kylo was on my side in the Jedi Temple. I can see that now. But I still wanted to hurt him.”

“Kylo was on your side _then,_ but bringing down Snoke surely benefited him too,” said Sunny.

“Yes,” said Rey. “It was like he was under a spell. I could see that as soon as Snoke died.”

Sunny tried to probe her thoughts. “Kylo’s not necessarily a good person.”

“According to Rey, he’s a _bad_ person,” said Storm, opening one eye. Sunny glared at her. This was a tricky conversation and he didn’t need her putting her oar in. Storm shrugged and went back to sleep.

“I wish it were that simple,” said Rey. “But what Kylo said was true: Like him, I can see more of others’ thoughts and feelings than most people can. And I’ve never felt it more strongly than with him. So strongly that I could feel what Snoke was doing to him, how he’d got him all twisted up inside. Kylo hates what he did.” Rey sighed and rested her chin on Sunny. “I didn’t want to see that about him.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I’d have to feel sorry for him.” She dug viciously at a crack between the cobbles with her spoon. “I used to dream of what I’d do to Kylo if I had the chance. He’d grown up with every advantage. A prince of the galaxy, a family, everything I never had. He could have done anything, and he chose to do such _evil._ I hated him so much!” She stabbed the spoon into the ground. It broke. Rey buried her face in Sunny’s feathers.

“We thought he was sad, really,” said Sunny. “He didn’t do anything particularly evil that we saw.”

“Well yes! Away from Snoke’s influence, _yes!”_ said Rey. Her head sunk until her nose was almost touching Sunny’s head. She sniffled, and Sunny flattened his feathers against the salty deluge he felt looming over him. “And now I’ve faced Snoke myself, seen how he gets inside your mind and makes you doubt things you’ve believed all your life…”

“Puffer fish,” said Sunny, and this time Rey caught his meaning.

“Yes. All the lies Snoke fed him,” Rey said, burying her face in Sunny’s feathers. “Snoke told him Tuanul Village was part of his war. That they were dangerous.” Rey took a deep, sniffling breath. She seemed on the verge of tears. “And Kylo was telling the truth. He doesn’t lie.”

She wiped her eyes before her tears could fall on Sunny.

“But what awful things he’s done, caught up in other people’s lies. Kylo told me why he hated his father, but now I wonder if Snoke got into his memories too and turned them bad.”

There was a movement on the path below Luke’s hut, and a moment later Stillwater came up with something hugged against her. She deposited it in Rey’s hands and hopped up on the bench beside them. Sunny and Rey both looked at the objects in her hands. Kylo’s lightsaber, and Snoke’s ring.

“Spoils to the victor,” said Stillwater.

Rey nodded absently. “Thanks,” she said. “I just wish it felt like more of a victory.” After a moment, she held the ring up. A chip of red crystal caught the last fading light of the day. Rey eyed it narrowly and her lips twisted with distaste.

Then she started to fiddle with the lightsaber. “This is a terrible lightsaber. I wonder what’s wrong with it?”

Sunny fetched a glowlamp from inside the hut so she could see better. She began to take it apart, head bent, losing herself in the work.

After a few minutes her hands stopped. Her head jerked up and she stared at the darkening sky. “I hate this connection,” she said fiercely.

“Huh?” said Sunny, following her gaze towards the early stars. He couldn’t think what they might have done to deserve such a glare.

“Oh!” Rey scrubbed at her temples roughly as though she could rub out her thoughts. “It’s like Kylo’s broadcasting his feelings. Shame. Self-loathing. I don’t want to feel all that. He can be as sorry as he likes, but it won’t bring anyone back to life.”

“You lost me there. I thought you wanted Snoke dead,” said Sunny.

“Not Snoke! Kylo’s father,” said Rey. "He's drowning in guilt over that."

“Oh” said Sunny uncomfortably. “Well, Kylo should have made better choices. Then he wouldn’t be beating himself up now.”

Rey reached for a small tool looped into her belt and used it to break open the casing on the lightsaber’s kyber crystal. “Maybe I should have acted as if he was _capable_ of making better choices,” she said savagely. “Instead of acting like he’s still that torturer, that murderer, that he’ll never be anything else…”

Sunny nibbled Rey’s thumb gently, which seemed to calm her down. “What about Uke? Where’s he?”

“I don’t know. He went to Snoke’s stronghold to take him down, and he didn’t come back.” Rey’s look was bleak. Her hands continued their work, almost of their own volition. There were many small parts inside the hilt. Sunny marvelled at how Rey’s hands seemed to recognise them almost by feel: little screws, tiny coils, odd asymmetric widgets that clinked softly as Rey sorted them. Eventually the lightsaber’s crystal dropped into her palm. Sunny and Stillwater craned over Rey’s arms for a better look. The strange, faceted thing seemed heavy: dense and dark as blood.

Rey held it up to the light. “Huh. Look at that big crack. No wonder. And look, there’s a piece missing.” She paused for a moment, thinking, then picked up Snoke’s ring. Moving carefully, Rey fitted the ring’s crystal against the lightsaber’s. There was a soft click as the two fitted together, and Rey made a soft noise of satisfaction.

“Can you fix it?” asked a soft voice from the darkness outside their lamplit circle.

“I can fix a lot of things, if I want to,” said Rey, without looking up.

Sunny marvelled at her self control, for she showed no surprise at hearing Kylo’s voice come out of the night. But maybe it was no surprise to Rey, thanks to the mysterious connection she’d described. Sunny blinked hard to regain his night vision. He could just make out Kylo’s tall, bulky silhouette.

After a moment Rey gave a tiny nod towards the bench on the other side of the doorway.

Kylo stepped into the light of the glowlamp, holding Strike in his arms. He sat down carefully the way giants do when they first meet porgs and are afraid a sudden movement might scare them off. Rey, like the porgs, was not so easily startled. She merely raised her eyes after a moment to meet Kylo’s dark gaze.

“Of course I’d know if you were doing something to my lightsaber,” he said, as if replying to something she’d asked.

“Any food left?” asked Strike. Kylo put him down. Storm de-cloaked from her spot by the doorstep and led Strike inside. Sunny could hear them clattering about, and wondered how they’d reach the bench where Rey prepared food.

Strike and Storm came out holding a bowl of chowder between them, and settled at Kylo’s feet to eat it. Sunny noticed Strike’s limp was gone.

Rey noticed too. “Hey porg, I’m glad to see you looking better.”

Strike looked up from his bowl, his face decorated with a moustache of chowder. “He healed me,” he said proudly.

Rey gave Kylo a puzzled look. “I didn’t know healing was a dark side thing.”

He gave a quick, sidelong grin, embarrassed. “Figured I should stop waiting to be told what the Force can and can’t do for me. _You_ never do.”

Rey snorted, but Sunny could tell she was flattered nonetheless.

Strike broke the awkward pause that followed. “You’re a terrible host, Rey. Kylo’s hungry. Look at his nose.”

It was true. Kylo’s nostrils were flaring. Without realising it, he’d been breathing in deep draughts of steam from the savoury stew.

“Uh…” said Rey, stirring herself reluctantly. “I think that’s all the bowls we have.” Either she didn’t want to throw Sunny off her lap, or she didn’t want to share her food with Kylo.

“I’ll do it,” said Strike, finishing his meal. He took the bowl in and they could hear him struggling to refill it.

Kylo leaned around the doorway to watch. Sunny guessed he must be curious about the interior of the hut. But Luke was his enemy, and Kylo wouldn’t go in.

“Porgs, huh. People probably think they’re so cute when they first meet them,” Kylo said.

The porgs chuckled. “Cute? Ha ha ha!”

“Big mistake,” said Rey, giving Storm and Stillwater a playful shove with her foot that made them giggle. “They’re tough. And not afraid of anything. That one you were holding tried to make a treaty with Snoke.”

Kylo grinned at Strike as he came out of the hut, a full bowl of chowder balanced on his head. “Thanks,” he said. Taking the bowl, he ate with visible appetite.

Rey picked up the pieces of lightsaber again. “I just have to get that chip of crystal out of Snoke’s ring,” she said.

She held it up and stared at it intently for a couple of moments. Kylo’s face took on an identical expression, and the two looked eerily similar, both focused on the ring. Everything around them became very still. For a moment the air Sunny breathed felt gluey and intolerable. Then everything became light and easy, and his lungs filled with the soft night air.

Beside him, Sunny heard Storm and Stillwater gasp as the air returned to their lungs too.

Rey had the ring in one hand, its socket empty, and its little chip of kyber crystal in the other. She shot Kylo a glance. “You helped just then. I felt it,” she muttered, and looked away quickly. Sunny wasn’t surprised: nobody could have met the intensity of Kylo’s gaze just then. His eyes were on Rey’s face and his lips were parted as if he’d witnessed something extraordinary.

Rey deflected his attention with a sharp turn of her head, almost a shrug. Her fingers returned to work, turning the red jewel, sensing its edges. At last she fitted it to the crystal from the lightsaber. There was a flash of light and a soft ringing sound, and Rey gave a little hum of pleasure. Sunny squinted at the stone in her hand. It appeared whole, though still starred with little cracks.

“Good,” said Kylo. Rey threw him a quick glance, inscrutable, then put the lightsaber back together, her fingers working in a fast flicker of movement.

And then it was done. Rey ignited the blade, and it shone with a steady light, a warm sunset red.

“Beautiful,” breathed Kylo.

Rey sat back and held still, looking at the blade. “Does your Book say how you should balance justice and mercy?” she said quietly.

“It only says that you should balance them.” Kylo’s lips quirked. “It’s a bit short on details.”

Rey grimaced. “Typical.”

She switched off the lightsaber and gave him a long look, taking in the cramped angles of his long arms and legs, his massive shoulders hunched, his feet tucked awkwardly under the low bench.

Sunny hadn’t seen him like this before. Even in the library, reading or lying on his sofa, his whole body had seemed electric with pent up energy. Fingers tapping, toes twitching as though his feet were eager to be elsewhere. Rey seemed to find this new, quiet Kylo strange too.

Then she handed him the lightsaber. “Here. Take Snoke’s ship and go.”

Kylo shook his head. “I couldn’t touch that ship,” he said. He clipped the hilt to his belt and simply sat, hands hanging loose. Rey’s eyes travelled over him.

“It’d smell of Snoke,” said Sunny sympathetically.

“Besides, where would I go?” Kylo said.

“If you stay, you know the Resistance will be here sooner or later,” said Rey.

Kylo rested his chin in his hands and stared into the night. “I’m tired of running from who I am.”

“Or who you might become,” said Rey softly.

Kylo shot her a glance, his eyebrows peaking up in hope. “I’m free now,” he said. “But you, what will you do?”

Sunny, sitting in Rey’s lap, could feel how her breath caught in her throat. But she didn’t say anything.

“Fight for the Resistance?” Kylo probed.

“I guess. I have friends there…” she said uncertainly. “I guess they'll find something for me to do.” She gave Kylo a bleak look. “The fighting goes on, only now I’m fighting for more people, I guess.”

There was a silence. Rey sunk her fingers into Sunny’s feathers and swirled them around. Evidently a soothing sensation for her; For Sunny it was bliss.

“I just wish there was something different,” Rey said.

“I hope you find out what happened to your family one day,” said Kylo gently. “The General might be able to help with that. She has access to a lot of information.”

“Your mother,” said Rey tonelessly.

Kylo winced slightly. After a pause, he went on. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. Chasing you. The interrogation…” He stopped, and gave a bitter laugh. “That was something, wasn’t it? Usually when I use the Force to read somebody’s mind, it’s like feeling my way round a dark house, bumping into the furniture, grabbing things. With you, I felt like I’d fallen through the sky into another world.” He looked up at Rey, shaking his head in wonder. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what it was like for you. Frightening, I guess.”

“Yes, but….” She took a long, shuddering breath. “You used the Force on me, and for the first time I knew something about myself I’d never known before.”

“An awakening,” said Kylo softly.

“Yes. I felt complete. Suddenly a part of me I’d never known was missing was there!” she said. “And I felt… _seen._ Somebody saw me. _You_ saw me. On Jakku, I was invisible. The breath of Ri’ia, the desert wind, could blow me away and nobody would ever notice.”

“And you saw me,” said Kylo ruefully. “I’d spent so many years trying to become this powerful dark servant of Snoke’s, and you just….” Kylo spread his hands. “You just blew it all away. You were my enemy. You were poison to me and to everything I believed. _Poison._ And I wanted to drink every last drop.”

Sunny felt Rey twitch, and her grip on him tightened as though he could shield her from the effect Kylo’s words had on her. “Huh. I was just trying to get away,” she muttered. “The Force gave me a weapon I could use against you.”

“Well, I’m sorry I hurt you,” Kylo said. “That day, and today in the temple when Snoke came in.”

The memory of it made Sunny ruffle his feathers into angry points. “We all thought you’d betrayed her,” he told Kylo. “And the way you did it! You humiliated her!”

Rey gave Sunny a dark look, soothing him down with gentle fingers.

“Humiliated,” she said, as though tasting the word. “Until I joined the Resistance, I didn’t even know that word. Shame, humiliation…nobody could afford those things on Jakku.”

Her look hardened into a glare. “I had to eat dust so many times there,” she said furiously. “Swallow my pride, because somebody had their boot on my neck. But afterwards…I knew I’d never let anyone treat me the way I was treated on Jakku. And suddenly there you were, forcing me to bow to Snoke. Only now, I knew better. I wasn’t just a desert scavenger any more.”

Sunny twisted his neck up to look at Rey. There was steel and fire in her voice, and she looked every inch the warrior. Somebody to be feared, indeed. But there was no fear on Kylo’s face. Awe, perhaps. As though Rey was some marvellous shining thing. Rather than fear the fire, he leaned closer to her light.

“Jakku must have been horrible,” said Kylo. “I can’t imagine how you stood it for such a long time. Holding out on your own like that…”

For a moment Rey truly saw him, and Sunny could feel her flinch. She seemed to have no defenses against the softness in his eyes or the sympathy in his voice.

Kylo spread out his hands in appeal. “But can’t you see why you had to believe I betrayed you today? Snoke would have known otherwise.”

“He could read your mind?” Rey’s eyes grew wide with horror, imagining it.

“All too easily,” said Kylo bitterly, and now it was he who turned his face aside, hardly able to bear her compassion. “We only succeeded because he was more interested in enjoying your pain than in questioning me.”

Rey reached out one hand and patted his arm timidly. He moved to snatch it away, looking troubled. “Rey, no! You don’t understand! I’m not…reliable.” He met her eyes with a fierce, dark gaze. “The worst thing is that half of me still believed what I was saying. It seemed so easy and so…so _right,_ to give you to Snoke.”

Rey’s grip tightened, and she laid her other hand on his for emphasis. “I understand. I really do.”

“But that’s the reason it worked. Snoke believed us,” finished Kylo. “And here we are.” He turned his hand upwards to accept hers, and his fingers curled around it in a simple, protective gesture. Again, Sunny felt that hitch in Rey’s breath.

They stared at each other, eyes wide. Two explorers seeing something they’d sought all their lives. There, through the mist, on the horizon, perhaps the promised land.

Kylo relaxed slowly. Sunny could feel Rey relax too, but her heart was beating very hard. Kylo was studying her as though he wanted to commit every inch of her to memory. Her gaze drank him in too: even now, sitting and holding her hand so quietly, every line of his body expressed a great power contained.

“So, now what?” she asked, after a long silence. “Are you just going to wait here for the Resistance to arrest you? To throw you in prison, or whatever they decide?”

Unexpectedly, Kylo laughed. He stretched, looking suddenly light and easy. “Whatever they decide. Yes.”

“The sentence could be death!” Rey cried, her voice cracking.

“I’m sick of being afraid,” said Kylo fiercely.

“He’s sick of feeling guilty,” said Strike.

“That too,” said Kylo. He stood up suddenly.

At their feet, Storm sang softly, to the tune of Thorporg’s Exile, _“He squared his shoulders, turned to go, his face towards unknown shores…”_ Sunny felt briefly happy for her, knowing the praise Storm would earn if she made this new saga. It would be sung for generations.

Rey looked stricken. “No!”

Kylo looked down, smiling sadly at her. “I don’t think there’s some great future in store for me now, Rey. Those were stories for children. Lies.”

“No! I won’t let them…”

Sunny was struck by the difference in age between them. Kylo wasn’t old like Snoke, no, nor weatherbeaten like Luke. But strong as he was, Kylo looked so tired and disillusioned compared to Rey. Her face still had the shine of hope. She still had the power to believe in dreams.

Kylo turned and started to walk away into the night.

“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t….” Rey stood up, tumbling Sunny off her lap. Then, because she was young and bold, she ran after him and put her arms around him, burying her face between his shoulderblades. Kylo froze. _“I’ll_ speak for you,” she cried, her voice muffled against his back. “If there’s a trial, I’ll tell them how we killed Snoke _together.”_

Kylo held himself tensely, tilting his great height away from her. Rey only tightened her grip, bracing her slight weight against his as if she could shake sense into him. Sunny thought it more likely he’d shake her off, but Rey persisted. “They have to know how you turned on Snoke, even after he’d controlled you for years.”

Kylo turned in her embrace and wrapped his arms around her with a great shuddering gasp. He couldn’t speak, only stood, stroking her hair and nuzzling the top of her head. “Rey….don’t make me hope again,” he said at last, his voice breaking. “You’ll think you can save me, and you’ll even believe it, but it’ll be another lie in the end.”

“No!”

“Yes. You can’t save people like me. I’m not some piece of broken machinery you can fix.”

“Luckily for him,” muttered Stillwater. “I’ve seen her whack that stuff with a spanner.”

Rey stepped out of his arms and took his hands in hers, looking up at him seriously. “I don’t know where you’re headed, or me.” She seemed to run out of words then, and just stood. The night wind stirred her hair so the loose strands flicked their both faces. Kylo moved then, gently tucking them behind her ears with trembling fingers.

“I’ve had a lifetime of doing things on my own,” Rey said at last. “It’s not good. I think…” She took a deep breath. “I think there are things we can do better together.”

Sunny knew he would never forget this image: The tall man in black, head bowed, looking down on the girl with the shining face who held his hands clasped in hers. He seemed afraid that any movement would break the spell.

“Walk beside me,” whispered Rey. “One day at a time. I won’t lead you anywhere you don’t want to go.”

Suddenly Kylo stepped forward and pulled her wholly into his arms. She tucked her head under his chin with a soft sigh. Then she raised her face to his wondering smile, and they kissed; shyly, tenderly, hardly daring to believe, fingers tracing the strange bare lines of each other’s faces, hands smoothing over the long, lean curves of their bodies as though afraid to believe they were real. Solid bodies in the night air that folded around them, making a space around their warmth, carrying away their whispered half words.

“I didn’t…”

“I never…”

“Will you…”

“Your heart…”

They could barely speak, not now, with their lips locked together, moving gently as though finding the perfect fit.

“Now that’s just weird. Do you think they just absorb each other when they mate?” asked Strike.

“I think it’s romantic,” said Stillwater.

Sunny slid a glance at her. His beautiful soft companion. She was as moon-eyed as he was, watching the couple.

“Come on. It’s a beautiful night for a walk,” he said. And they went, shoulder to shoulder, leaving Kylo and Rey. Sunny looked back once. The wind had twined their hair together, and if its cool fingers searched for a way to pry them apart, it found no space between them. “Not even the stars will keep them apart now,” Sunny said.

“Tell that to Storm. She can put it in her saga,” said Stillwater. “But yeah, they look a bit glued together.”

 

[—    —    — ]

 

“You can get used to the smell,” said Stillwater, looking around the cockpit of Snoke’s ship. Everything glowed, polished to a rich sheen. No expense spared, from the golden fittings to the deep soft leather of the flight couches.

Sunny jumped up on a passenger bench under the side windows and prodded the seat. “Nice. Not as comfortable as the library sofas, but very classy.”

“Needs more pillows,” said Storm.

The two droids trundled in from wherever they’d been below in the guts of the ship, buzzing and tweedling busily to each other. Surprisingly, Strike was with them.

“You coming with us?” said Sunny.

“I might as well,” said Strike. “Kylo’s dead to me. It’s ‘Rey this’ and Rey that’ all day with him. What am I, chopped liver?”

“Well, you’re just in time. Apparently Niney’s always wanted to steal a ship.”

And indeed, there she was, firmly clamped into the pilot’s seat. BB-8 sat beside in the co-pilot’s chair. They flipped a few switches and the engine started to life, a low hum that rose to a muted scream. There was a strange lurching sensation, like being caught on the crest of a wave. A wave that rolled on and on, up and up, and never broke.

The porgs crammed against the windows to watch Ahch-To drop away beneath them, the sea spreading in a blue infinity dotted with other islands, then the flat ocean became a curve, a glowing blue bowl, and then the space around them bloomed into a miracle of lights.

“We are the porg!” they shouted ecstatically. “And now we fly!”

 

 

The End

 

 

 

 

 

* * *


End file.
